By Sunlight
by Landstradd
Summary: The Potters prepared for the worst when they went into hiding, and the most intelligent member of the Marauders was never mistrusted because of a rumor. Events after Halloween change and Harry is raised by people who care. 4th Year AU, rated for language.
1. Prologue, Part I

**Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. It belongs to Rowling.**

**Author's Note: I give my most grateful thanks to those kind enough to take the time out of their day to review my most humble work.**

**Timeline is ten years ahead of canon. Therefore the attack on the cottage at Godric's Hollow is in 1991 rather than 1981, and all dates should be adjusted accordingly.  
**

* * *

By Sunlight

Prologue, Part I: Carefully Laid Plans Set Into Action

* * *

A man in his early twenties walked down the snow covered streets toward Privet Drive under the light of the full moon. It had been a week or two short of three months since Albus Dumbledore had tried to finish the destruction of the closest thing he had to a family. Even if it was not the man's intent to do that, it was nearly the result of what he had done.

Lily and James had been murdered in the defense of the son. Harry, their eldest child, had become a target for most dangerous Dark Lord since Grindelwald had torn apart Europe. He had retrieved the recording crystals from the ruins of Godric's Hollow himself and grimly watched James battle Voldemort on ground he had carefully prepared and maintained. He had lasted all of two minutes. The battle, which had his best friend had fought using mostly his own specialty of Transfiguration was actually ninety seconds longer than most of the instances of single combat with the mad man.

The number of corpses of transfigured and conjured animals was actually rather frightening.

Considering James had only ever been truly skilled at transfiguration and his power hovered somewhere around the eighty-seventh percentile, that was actually quite remarkable. Lily had rushed through the a ritual that she, James, and the were had painstakingly researched and prepared, just in case the worst would come to pass.

She'd finished the complex part, yet infinitely easier, just as Voldemort was making his way toward them after having finished James. Thankfully the ritual required that she put up as much as a fight as possible against the monster. A barrier had been placed around Harry and his sister as a result of the first part of the ritual.

The fight that Flitwick's favorite student in three decades put up tore apart the upper floor of the cottage in Godric's Hollow, and lasted for three minutes. Lily was actually quite a bit stronger than her husband magically, and though he was quite a bit better in the areas of Transfiguration, she was all around more skilled, but she actually managed to draw blood from Lord Voldemort, black as it may have been.

She was the first since Dumbledore to actually draw blood, but he still had decades of experience on her and would not be denied what he desired.

The requirements of the ritual had been fulfilled, both parents had died by magical violence, both fighting tooth and nail to protect their children, both by the same hand. And when that hand had turned against one of their children, the magics meant to harm that child, Harry, had instead rebounded upon Voldemort, the power of the Killing Curse he had used increased a thousand fold. Though Harry did not come away unscathed, he had gained a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead.

He had seen a few other surges of energy that needed to be investigated, but that would be something for later. When he had custody of his wards, and they were far from the plotting of the Headmaster. Padfoot was just too much of a goddamn hothead for anyone's good.

He just had to go off half cocked and try and kill Peter. Padfoot had never been the most controlled member of the Marauders, but goddamn it, this was a new low. And no one was going to believe it when a werewolf said that the Potters had switched Secret Keepers at the last moment. So now Sirius Orion Black III had blown up Peter and a street full of mundane men and women in his rage, with the result of landing himself in the maximum security wing of Azkaban, never having even had a trial. And Dumbledore, as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, had allowed it, when he **knew **that Peter was the actual Secret Keeper.

Thinking of that Rat, he had tried to speak Pettigrew's actual Marauder name when referencing the man, but couldn't. That meant the pacts that the four of them had made had worked, and because of his betrayal, Peter would now be referred to as the derogatory Wormtail, rather than being a reference to the mouse shadow on a moon in a Frank Herbert novel.

Further more, possibly under the mistaken belief that the magics that had protected Harry were blood based and sustained, the aforementioned meddling old man had placed Harry with the last people his parents had wanted to end up with custody of him. He believed so strongly in the innate goodness of people that he believed simply because they were related that they would become family.

And little Ginny. Their family already a target, the birth of their second child had been kept such a secret that the number of people who knew could be counted on both hands with fingers left over. And Dumbledore, in his infinite wisdom (and possibly dementia), had decided that it would be best if Harry was thought to be the last Potter, and their secrecy had back fired upon them.

Remus paused for a moment trying to remember just whose idea it was to get Gin-gin's birth a secret. His amber eyes narrowed as he generally excellent recall failed him. So he turned to a maxim he had developed in the past few weeks of hindsight.

"When in doubt, blame Dumbledore."

So three month old Ginevra Rose Potter had been given to a family that had six other children, all red heads whom she could easily be passed off as one of their own, and her name had been changed to Ginevra Molly Weasley. Getting her back would be easy anyway, the Weasleys had paper thin wards, and both parents were crap duelists. It was Harry that he was most concerned about at the moment, the Weasleys would take care of Ginny. Harry would have no such luck with his Aunt and Uncle.

He had been so very close to finally gaining control of his transformations, like the Lycans of legand, when Halloween and its tragedy had come to pass. He had been hollowed out by it, emotionally dead and physically exhausted for a period of two weeks. He had then gone to the headmaster and asked where the children were. Dumbledore said that the children he, Remus Lupin, was supposed to have care of in the event that Sirius was unable, were 'safe' and that he need not worry about them, sliding in a few subtle hints and barbs that he, as a werewolf, would not be able to care for them any way, no matter what the Potter wills said.

Which was one of the items of the ever growing list of problems he had with the Headmaster, and the development of his new maxim in life. He had sealed the Ministry held copies of the wills of James and Lily Potter. The copy that Sirius had kept in his flat had been 'accidentally' destroyed when it had been raided following his arrest. That left only the Gringotts copy, and Albus most like believed, mistakenly, that Sirius was the executor of the estate. Just like he had probably believed that the Marauders had stopped trusting Remus when rumor started spreading that most werewolves in England had flocked to Voldemort's banner and those that hadn't were forced through the use of a spell meant to specifically enslave werewolves.

More disturbingly, Dumbledore had also made over two dozen attempts to gain access to the Potter Vaults under the guise of being appointed Harry's 'magical guardian'. Thankfully the Gringotts held copies of all wills are executed internally immediately following the death of the writer, and had prevented the former. They had also repossessed James's invisibility cloak for him. He had no clue how Dumbledore had gotten his hands on that particular heirloom, the only people that James had ever let anyone use it were Lily and the Marauders, and the later were only allowed that after they had been friends for six years, and Lily hadn't known about the cloak until after the two had been engaged.

The latter was actually something Remus had no worry about, due to the fact that while Sirius was both of the children's Godfather, and should have therefore been their guardian, at law, Remus was the one who had undergone the rituals and oaths needed to be Harry's magical Godfather. Sirius was Ginny's Godfather in both cases.

More importantly, if he could get the wills executed, he would be able to by pass Albus's borderline illegal actions. The purebloods loved their laws to keep those they viewed as beneath where they belonged, but what they loved even more were the loopholes that allowed them to continue to do whatever they hell they wanted. And Potters' had worded every last thing in their wills perfectly, citing chapter and verse of the countless laws on the books that would allow their children to go to exactly who intended, bigots be damned. And they had laid out other plans, both in the event of the war continuing too long or their sudden deaths. Just because both Lily and James had been Gryffindors didn't mean that they were completely without cunning.

But Remus could not allow himself to take custody of two of the only people he still had left when he could be a potential danger to them. So he had brought his attention back to calming and accepting the beast within him in the manner similar to that in which Animagi gain control of their transformation. There had been a few hiccups, but nothing that would make him give up what he could gain. He did occasionally wonder why no one had tried anything some simplistic, but the reasons had always eluded him. It had been years of mental and emotional wrestling with his inner animal, something he had started shortly after his friends had revealed their own transformations (which had been the proverbial light bulb for his quest), but he had been inching closer. He had been set back by the emotional upheaval, and it had cost him a few precious months, but he had finally done it. He was now for all intents and purposes a wolf Animagus who was more deeply connected with his inner animal than anyone had ever been before.

So now here he stood in Little Whinging, staring up at the full moon with human eyes for the first time he could remember. He had been so young when Grayback had infected him... As soon as he had been certain that he was not going to change, he had apparated here, ready to set in motion the plan he had started laying as soon as he had figured out where Dumbledore had hidden Harry. He was going to be getting his cubs back, and woe unto those who tried to get in his way.

He reached into the pockets of his thin coat pulling out a rune carved stone of left hand side and a thin pair of wire rim spectacles out of the right. The stone was roughly triangular in shape fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. As he took the corner onto Privet Drive, he brushed one of the larger runes located by one of the corners of the stone.

Sympathetic casting combined with symbolic casting. It had taken days of work to get the arrays on all of the power transformers in Little Whinging, but it had been more than worth it. Now with a simple touch and a spark of magic, the entire town lost power. Remus grinned broadly. Such marvelous chaos could have been wrought in Hogwarts's hallowed halls with these techniques, but quite frankly Remus didn't want anyone in the school knowing his full bag of tricks, and he had only told his brethren what he was fully capable of after they had graduated, because if he had told them before, he would have been brow beaten into using all of his tricks in some prank.

The only reason that Lily had gotten the top spot in their year uncontested was due not to the fact no one could match her prodigious intellect, but rather because the only one who could had to drag three reprobates kicking and screaming through exams every year. Even when Sirius and James had manned up for OWLs and NEWTs, he had still been run ragged and exhausted ensuring the three would be able to pass by the time the exams had taken place. He had been lucky that he stayed awake long enough through both sets of exams to make the straight Exceeds Expectations that he had gotten.

Moving toward Number Four, putting the glasses on his face, glasses which brought magic into the visible spectrum, he scrutinized the ramshackle wards surrounding the Dursley's home one last time, absolutely despising Dumbledore for having thought that the Blood protections he was ready to believe in would appear out of thin air. The man must have finally gone around the twist... Or...

Remus shuddered at the concern that passed through his mind. The possibility that Dumbledore was doing all of this fully aware that he was leaving Harry wide open to attack, and in what would probably be an abusive environment was truly frightening

The wards that were present were not even proper protections, they were a legion of monitoring spells that were probably hooked up to countless little delicate devices in the man's office. A simple press of a larger rune in one of the second of the other corners of the stone in his hand caused a prepared loop in the wards reporting functions that would leave the old man clueless to what was going to happen here. Quite possibly clueless for an indefinite period of time.

Seeing the wards react as he had expected them to, he slipped the spectacles off, and crossed the street toward the house, pressing the last large rune on the stone before tossing it away. A simple sleeping spell would keep all present in the house at its casting in a deep, dreamless sleep until the rising of the sun.

Pulling his wand as he walked up the path to the door he cast a pair of charms, the first directed at the front door and the second a human revealing charm directed at the house in general. The front door unlocked and swung open of its seemingly own accord, while the last charm told him that three non-magicals, one male child, one male adult, and one female adult, were on the first floor, and one wizard child was on the ground floor. Checking all of the rooms one the ground floor, Remus could not find the one he was looking for, so he then checked the coat closet and finally the cupboard under the stairs.

There, in the dark space under the stairs, the one and a half year old was laying on a crib mattress with only a thin blanket to cover him. He sighed, this should have been the first place he had looked considering Petunia's opinion of her sister, and the fact that her husband Vernon, though Remus had only met the man (and that is using only the broadest biological definition of the word) once at Lily's wedding, seemed to hate magic with a passion only make Dumbledore's choice of guardians worse.

He cast a few simple diagnostic charms while he looked Harry over. Only two months and he was looking a little thinner, no injuries consistent with physical abuse, though that only meant it would probably be mental and emotional. It had only been a few months, so Harry would hopefully only remember this in a nightmare or two later in life. His inner wolf growled angrily, and he had to resist the urge to go injure Vernon and Petunia. He sighed as he scooped the young boy up and gently carried him off. He would be retrieving Ginny in the morning, after he had left Harry with a pair of the Potter house elves who would have orders to kill anyone who was not him or with him.

He smiled grimly at that thought as he exited the house. Even though the elves rarely used their magic for violence didn't mean that they couldn't. If just mean that anyone and everyone was completely unprepared for it when they did. The fact of the matter was that House Elves drew all of their power from the bond they had with their Family, and one of the largest sources was the latent energy that built up over time as the family continued to reside in the same residence. There was also the fact that House Elves were significantly more powerful when they were treated in line of what they viewed as part of the family.

Given the general age of the Potter Family, the fact that few homes they lived in all saw major use, that the wards around all of the homes were of all older than two centuries, and the two elves that would be protecting Harry had been the personal elves of both Lily and James, thus having been personally bonded to a magic user rather than impersonally bonded to a family, all of those points made Remus fairly certain that Mippy and Rippy were among the most power House Elves on the planet, and he actually pitied anyone who would attempt to harm Harry. Not that that would make him show mercy to anyone. He ran out of mercy on October Thirty-first, Nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-one.

He may have been completely out of mercy at this point of his life, but Remus Romulus Lupin could still pity those he would be forced to destroy. The beast within him made a pleased sound at the thought of killing those that would oppose his pack.

* * *

Using the same spectacles he did the night before, he watched the wards surrounding the Burrow one last time, confirming his suspicions. He wasn't sure, but he thought that one or two of the constructs with the platform had given way, and the defenses were now weaker than they had been a week ago. He'd timed his visit so that Arthur would be on one of his rare days off from work at the Ministry. He left the glasses on as he opened the gate and took the path to the front door. Who's brilliant idea was it to base every last ward at the property line, and then make a corridor in the wards to allow people access to the front door? Remus couldn't hold a candle to James's power, being only somewhere in the sixty-second percentile, but even he could bring the wards surrounding the house down from where he stood, and it would barely take the wind out of him. But then again, he could have kicked these wards down from the outside given the state of them.

Slipping the spectacles in his pocket before he knocked the door, he thought about what he knew of this family as he waited for someone to answer. He was acquaintances with the parents, Arthur and Molly, having been a few years behind them in Hogwarts. They had six sons, the eldest of whom would be starting at Hogwarts in September of this year.

Speaking of that, a boy looking to be ten or eleven years old opened the door, and asked, "Can I help you sir?"

"My name is Remus Lupin, and I need to speak to your mother and father, William."

The boy turned from the door and yelled, "Mum! Dad! There's a Mr. Lupin at the door for you!"

A minute later the tall, thin, bright red-haired frame of Arthur Weasley was ushering his eldest son away from the door, greeting the werewolf jovially, smiling, "Remus, this is an unexpected visit! Come in, come in! What can I do for you today?"

Remus wasn't going to waste time, and as he entered the Weasleys' home, told the man exactly why he had come, "I'm here to collect Ginevra Potter."

Arthur's face fell, and then quickly moved on to an expression bordering on horror, "The Headmaster never said who her parents were, just that they had been killed in the last days of the war and needed a good home..."

Remus resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the trusting and gullible man, and replied, "And he had no right what-so-ever to place Ginny anywhere. Not only were his actions illegal when he sealed the Ministry copies of the wills of Lily and James Potter, I believe he did so that he could have his own way with their children."

The Weasley patriarch's face paled at the mention of Albus Dumbledore doing wrong, and quickly said, "So I suppose it was you who was supposed to get custody of Harry and Ginny?"

"In the event that... Sirius was unable to, yes I was, and I've already rescued Harry from the extremely poor choice of where Dumbledore had decided to place him."

"And just where did the Headmaster send him?"

"A place that both wills explicitly stated that neither of there children were to ever go."

Arthur nodded and said, "Molly isn't going to be happy about this..."

"And I can't find it withing myself to care that she will be displeased."

"She's in the kitchen... Both of them actually."

As they walked into the cozy kitchen of the Burrow, Molly Weasley was bustling about, cooking something, while a bassinet sat on the table, the aforementioned little girl laying in it. Molly turned to see who was entering the kitchen and said, "Remus, what brings you around the Burrow?"

"I am here to collect my ward, Ginevra Rose Potter."

Her face was almost comically blank for a few moments before it dawned on her who Remus was talking about. She shrieked out, in a voice that while not understandable to the rest of the house, would easily be heard, "You are not taking **my** daughter! She is ours now no matter what you..."

She had started to move towards Ginny during her diatribe, but had been cut off in both movement and voice when Remus stepped in her way, his wand already out, the tip glowing with the light of some spell. And he spoke to her in a tone that was so cold it dripped icicles.

"She never was, and never shall be, your daughter. By the wills of Lily and James Potter I was to have the care of the children in the event that Sirius was unable to. The only reason I waited as long as I did was to ensure that I would be able to properly care for them."

As he stopped and watched the woman move her mouth up and down like a fish out of water, he heard a child pad into the kitchen, he glanced at the approximately seven year old boy who was holding a rat in a cage before turning his attention back to Molly as the boy asked, "What's Mum yelling about, who is she yelling at, and why does he have his wand pointed at her?"

Arthur closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts and was about to speak, when Remus's head whipped back around to star at the caged rat, a look of predatory hunger on his face. A rat that started squeaking and running circles around his cage. Remus could almost here the thing that he had thought of as a monster for most of his life howling for the Rat's life blood to be spilled by its claws.

And the last free Marauder only had a few reasons not to listen to the urge to destroy Peter.

"Remus, why are you staring at my son's pet like it owes you money?"

"Because Arthur, that is no normal rat. It is an unregistered Animagus and a traitor. But it is still very much a rat."

"How do you know this Remus?"

"I went to school with the bastard. It wasn't Sirius that betrayed Lily and James, it was Peter. And the only reason I haven't spent the last two months hunting the little blighter was the fact I though Sirius had dealt with him... You do know that in addition to Ginny, I won't be leaving without the rat."

Poor little Percy was most puzzled by what was going on, and it seemed to him that after the man had left, the Weasleys had gotten a very raw deal, they had lost their new little sister and he had lost his new pet rat.

* * *

Remus sat in the sitting room of a home owned by the Potter family in Southern Wales, reading the latest edition of the Daily Prophet. The Potters no longer owned any larger residences since Potter Manor, which had been located in Kent, had been damaged beyond repair when a German bomber had crashed into it during World War Two. The family had never felt the need to rebuild such a large estate, and so instead had moved into one of the more comfortable and less ostentatious homes that they had.

This particular home was built on a the intersection of two minor laylines and the current ward platform were more that three-hundred years old. A more than adequately defensible position.

He had first wanted to get out of England at the earliest possible convenience, even going so far as to prepare to end a relationship he had been in since a few months after he had graduated from Hogwarts, but when he had found Wormtail, he had been force to choose between waiting and seeing if Sirius could be freed, or getting out of Dumbledore's reach as soon as possible. He could not abandon his last remaining brother to the Dementors, and so he had holed himself up with the children and a pair of house elves in one of the more heavily warded properties owned by House Potter.

He would take two months and see what would happen. Now all he could do was wait and hope, and maybe see if his girlfriend was willing to marry him and run off from Britain...

He had told her about his 'furry little problem' as James put it, and she had expressed her opinion about the bigotry surrounding that topic. So, maybe, just maybe, he would be able to salvage a relationship with a woman he cared very deeply for.

The wolf in him hummed happily at the thought making the situation with the one it thought as its mate permanent.

* * *

A woman of medium height, an athletic build, rosy cheeks, with black hair in a pageboy cut knocked at the front door of the house the next day and was greeted by Rippy the House Elf, and Hestia Jones was led into the sitting room, where she greeted Remus with a massive hug and a rather soul-searing kiss. Then she slapped him across the face.

"Remus, I know you've written me almost every other day, but your lack of explanations since the deaths of Lily and James has gone too far. You either start talking right now, or we are finished!"

Remus grimaced and replied, while rubbing his reddening cheek, "I'm going to need your oath that you will not reveal anything about the conversations we have in this house except to those I allow... which at this moment amounts to me, you, a pair of children whose collective age is less than twenty-four months, and the Potter House Elves."

She froze for a moment as the gravity of what he was asking, and that gave some rather serious implications of how important what he wanted to talking about was. "Is it really that important Remus?"

"Part of what I want to talk about has to do with the fact that Albus 'I think I know best for the everyone' Dumbledore placed little Harry with Lily's sister."

Hestia paled the mentioning of that. She had been on very good terms with Lily, and the one time she had talked about her sister had been following her wedding to James, where Petunia and her husband had showed a rather disturbing number of manaphobic behaviors.

She slipped her wand from her pocket and intoned, "I, Hestia Rowan Jones, hereby swear on my magic that by no action of my own will anything Remus Romulus Lupin speaks of in this house be known to any he does not wish."

"Thank you luv..." He stands and runs a hand through his hair, "This is going to be a bit of a long tale..."

* * *

Hestia stared blankly as her boyfriend finished his explanation of what he had been up to for the past few months and some of the things he and the people he referred to as family had been planning before then... And the fact that Sirius Black, who everyone knew was the Death Eater who betrayed the Potters, was actually innocent was a bit unbelievable.

In response to her saying that, he brought her down to the basement where he showed her a stunned and bound Peter Pettigrew, with a Dark Mark clear on his forearm.

"So, 'When in doubt, blame Dumbledore'?"

"The problem with the more subtle memory charms that are necessary for those that want to alter the memories of those who are either capable of Occlumency or have minds that are not entirely human is that the subconscious is still partly aware that something has been changed. So if the old man was trying to pull our strings that way, it would explain our paranoia. Plus there are a few unexplainable... glitches in my memory. Besides you can't tell me that all of his actions over the past few months, when lined up in a nice little row are not questionable."

She sighed, she had the same picture as most of wizarding Britain had of the man, and here the man she had been with for a few years had all but taken a sledgehammer to it.

"No, I can't... So you are going to see if you can spring Sirius from Azkaban, and then you are going to take the kids to the United States..."

"Yes. Do you know that it is actually legal for werewolves to marry in the U.S.?"

She shook her head, and said, "No, I did...," she froze partway through her sentence, "Are you asking me...?"

Remus smiled softly, "No more 'furry little problem', going somewhere it is actually legal... Yes, I am asking if you'll marry me Hestia."

The werewolf was driven to the floor by the flying tackle/hug from Hestia as she chanted, "Yes, yes, yes!"

Both he and his inner furry howled in victory at this, while she calmed down enough to say, while jabbing Remus in the ribs, "You should just be thankful that being a trained law enforcement officer is a very viable career no matter where in the world a person lives."

* * *

It was Monday over two weeks later that Remus let out a shout of joy upon reading the front page of the morning edition of the Daily Prophet. He picked up Harry, who was playing on the floor with a set of blocks, and held him in the air while they spun around.

"Marvelous news cub, your Uncle Padfoot is a free man again!"

Harry giggled and said, "Moo'y, Pa'fot!"

Hestia walked into the room, groaning, "Remus dear, you know I do not like getting up before the crack of noon on Mondays... If the wards are not being brought down by Dumbledore himself, you are going to find yourself sleeping on the couch."

The werewolf grinned from ear to ear saying, "Paddy's a free man! Sleeping on the couch is well worth the celebration!"

Shaking her head and watching as the were then carried Harry over to where one of the elves was keeping a close eye as Ginny played with some colorful, oversized plastic keys. God he loved the mundane world's baby toys. "You hear that littler cub? Padfoot's coming back!"

The red-haired baby girl giggled as well, the atmosphere in the house brightening by several degrees.

"Mippy!" Remus called out as he set Harry back down by his blocks, "I am going to need you to take some letters to the Owl Post Office!"

* * *

Not an hour later, the front door of the house burst open with a cry of, "Honey, I'm home!"

"In the sitting room, Sirius!"

"Moony, you won't believe what that _git_ Dumbledore told me when I asked where Harry and little Gin-Gin were. He told me that," he began a mocking parody of the Headmaster's voice, "'They are perfectly fine my boy, and completely safe. Surely someone who was just released from Azkaban should not be around small children.' Right pompous bastard. Have you used the crystals Lils left to scry for them the maps yet?"

"Just get your ass in here Padfoot, if Dumbledore is trying to keep you away from the children that means he doesn't know I **took **them back yet!"

With a mad cackle, Sirius rushed into the room, saying, "That can only mean one thing, because I know you well enough to understand that you wouldn't take custody of the pups until you had your furry little problem under control! Congratulations! And I must also applaud what you did to Peter, even if you didn't kill him..."

"Well, leaving him in his drawers in the middle of the Ministry Atrium with a sign saying 'I betrayed the Potters and framed Sirius Black! Ask me how!' And you figured my little victory out all on your own? My gods Padfoot, did spending time with the Dementors improve your intelligence?"

"I was already intell-a-mig-ent my friend, how else would I pass the NEWTs? So how far into which plan are you?"

"You passed the NEWTs because I worked my ass off to ensure you knew the theory you were too busy being a man-whore to learn in the first place. As for the plans, the Gringotts copies of the wills should hit the Ministry sometime Thursday. Hopefully the goblins will send off a package with identification and papers that will arrive tomorrow, and we'll then contact Lily's cousin Anna about helping us and the kids get out of the country."

"Anna... Anna... What was here surname again? I know she sounds familiar..."

"Smith. She was fourth on the list of guardians, after Alice. If you and I weren't available, it would mean we were dead, and quite frankly Lily didn't want to trust Peter with the kids if either of us weren't around..."

"Now the rat is a traitor, and is going to get to rot in Azkaban instead of me!"

He cackled again before he was hit in the with a water balloon.

"I see your girlfriend is here wolfy."

He was beaned with another balloon from the woman, which was accompanied by a yell of, "F_iancé_ now, you mangy mutt!"

The yell was followed by a third water balloon, though he paled as he remembered something and didn't even seem to notice the water balloon.

"Oh that reminds me, I need to write to Septima! She probably thinks the absolute worst of me..." he said in a rather depressed tone, "either because she hasn't heard from me in almost four months or she heard the news across pond that I was thrown into Azkaban..."

Remus shook his head and asked, "She still studying for her Arithmancy Mastery at the New York University of Magic?"

Sirius nodded glumly.

"Good because one of the more likely locations we'll be staying is in the general vicinity of Manhattan. So write your girlfriend, Paddy, see if she still will have you," Remus said grinningly, "though for the life of me I cannot figure out why she wanted you in the first place!"

* * *

The two Marauders, the two Potter children, and Hestia (formerly Jones) Lupin spent most of the next four years and some odd months living in Staten Island, New York.

Hestia and Remus had been married a few months after getting settled in, and were quite happy, while the relationship between Sirius and Septima Vector had dissolved at about the same time. She didn't know about the Potter children, having not trusted Sirius enough to give a secrecy oath. Since then he had had a rather large number of what could only be called 'relationships' though most of them only last a few weeks at the best.

It was a rather good thing that the house was one of the best warded properties in the world, though the fact that Padfoot was not allowed to bring any of his conquests home was probably a good thing...

Remus had both of the children reading (and by proxy learning) early, while it was Sirius's job to made sure that they played. Though with Harry, the play was done in such a way that it kept him fit, and sharpened his reflexes. Water balloons, small family games of football (not that game Yanks confuse with it, but the one you actually play with your feet, why the hell they need so many pounds of padding to play rugby was confusing to them anyway), and of course the random prank here and there.

They both felt rather poorly about that fact that the both the wills stated that even if it appeared that the Dark Tosser (which strangely enough was Lily's name for the dark lord) was dead, Harry was still to be given every advantage in case other Dark Wizards (or the seemingly obsessed Dumbledore) targeted him.

Remus had started homeschooling Harry when he had turned five he was very much like Lily when it came to learning. Ginny had wandered in on the lessons once or twice, but could really care less about it, as had been James's opinion of eduction, unless it had been transfiguration or he was trying to impress Lily. In his free time, Moony took up some classes at various universities and other institutions of eduction.

Padfoot was more or less a stay at home parent, taking care of both of the children... It was really bizarre that out of the four Marauders he was both the best cook and the most capable at household spells. For the big kid of the Marauders to be the homebody was something that Remus always found (inwardly) amusing.

He wasn't going to say anything about it, because if he did, someone else would have to do. And as much as he liked having Mippy and Rippy pick up the slack and help Sirius, he didn't want to have to rely to heavily on them. Though he did enjoy watching some of the fights between Mippy, Rippy, Paddy about who was going to cook what meal.

Hestia had gotten a job in the magical section of the NYPD, and worked the graveyard shift, but she was doing what she loved while she lived as a part of a household where all the adult members could afford to do what they wanted to for a living, without caring what it payed. She was slept in a silenced room in the mornings, but she spent a lot of time with Harry and Ginevra in the afternoons, and was the closest thing that either of them had to a mother.

Out of respect for James and Lily, all three of the adults were known as Aunt or Uncle, and none of them could see themselves taking the place of either of those two.

Harry was a mad little ball of energy when he wasn't learning something, and even when he was learning something that energy translated countless questions asked about. The adults were ever-thankful that they had been able to get a house on an acre and a half of land, and the wards they had placed on the property line(along with the eight foot tall privacy fence) let them feel secure enough to let him run around outside with one of the Elves watching over him. Though one of the few times he sat still outside of lessons was when he was reading a storybook. But as much he loved watching Moony and Padfoot have at each other with pranks, he rarely ever participated himself.

Ginny on the other hand was a much more sedate child. She would sit around, coloring, drawing, or playing with her dolls, but she would often join in with one of the adults when they would prank each other. She was also the only one other than Sirius who watched an appreciable amount of the telly. Sesame Street, Teletubbies, and Barney. Harry, no matter that it was meant for his age group, felt like he was getting a toothache whenever he watched them with her. She couldn't understand why Sirius wouldn't let her watch his 'stories' with him.

It was now two days after Harry's sixth birthday, very early in the morning, Remus was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into his tea. Sirius walked into the room, yawning and stretching, barely getting out an understandable, "Moony," before he reached for his morning cup of coffee.

"How the hell can you drink that sludge Padfoot? Your supposed to be English. Have a cup of tea!"

Sirius glared at his best friend and said, "This stuff is basically liquid caffeine, and I need plenty of that if I am going to be active by the time the pups are up and about."

"You never were a morning person, Sirius."

They sat in silence for a while before Sirius ventured, "You are usually reading the morning paper by now Moony, what's wrong?"

Hestia walked in and slung her uniform cloak over a chair, saying, "Sirius, asking someone what's wrong? Dear merciful heavens, the mutt is getting observant, isn't that one of the signs that the world is coming to and end?"

Remus rolled his eyes at his wife's attempt at humor, though he grunted when she dropped herself into his lap, "Harry's magic has stabilized."

Sirius, having just taken a sip of his coffee, spat it out in a spray and Hestia nearly fell off of Remus's lap. He spluttered for a few moments and then said, "Most kids who stabilize early only do so at or around their eighth birthday! He's just turned six! I know that James told me that he stabilized a little before he turned ten, which is the average isn't it?"

"I know... and yes, it is Padfoot. Your retention is getting better in your old age."

"I am not old! Any ways, I guess this is the end of our spending most of the year in New York is coming to an end."

"Not really, I've been poking around, and I think we'll be able to get our hands on enough international portals that we can link up this house with one in each of the countries we'll be needing to go to. I'll have to do a lot of traveling to get it all set up..."

His wife glared and jabbed him in the ribs, saying, "You'd best not stay away from home too long dear, or you'll find yourself relegated to a couch."

Remus sighed and muttered a 'yes, honey' before continuing, "Just be glad that Lily and James had already set up the arrangements for Harry's teaching with all the Master they lined up, and that they are all renowned as teachers. Also be thankful for the fact that they picked the ones who either owed them personal favors or come from families that owed House Potter large favors or even life debts. I wonder how the cubs will feel about spending a few months in Germany..."

Padfoot put a puzzled look on his face and asked, "Why is Germany first again?"

"The wandcrafters that House Potter has contracted for all of their custom wands since the fifteen hundreds reside in Munich. James was quite specific that Harry's first wand was crafted. Lily said push for him to have two."

"What is the difference between Ollivander, who is a famed wandmaker, and this family of wandcrafters?"

"Padfoot, how many times have James, Lily, and I explained this to you?"

Sirius looked properly shamefaced for all of a moment, and then he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with a smirk on his face as he replied, "This will be the fifth time I think."

"Well I was obviously wrong about you ability to retain information. Now pay attention mutt..."

"Why does everyone insist on calling me a mutt? I'm a Grim!"

Hestia laughed and said, "When the Kennel Club starts issuing pedigrees for Grims, we'll stop calling you mutt."

Moony chuckled softly at his wife's sense of humor and pushed forward, "Now as I was saying, the difference between wandmakers and crafters is that a wandmaker uses a narrow selection of most compatible woods and cores in order to get the best 'fit' possible for the largest number of people possible. A wandcrafter makes each wand individually for each witch and wizard, and the wand will always respond to its owner in the best manner possible."

Sirius dropped his forehead to the table making a decent sounding thump. "And as you explained it..."

"You remembered it. Honestly Sirius, what am I going to do with you?"

He grinned cheekily and turned into his Grim form. Remus sighed ruefully, and scratched his friend behind the ears when the dog padded over to him.

"Well we can't put you out to stud since that bastard Rodolphus cast that curse that sterilized you in seventh year..."

Padfoot whimpered at the mention of that event and Hestia sighed softly at it. Her and Remus had had a number of conversations on the fact that male werewolves were generally far less fertile than the norm. She cuddled a little closer to the man she loved so much.

"Hey, if you ever find a woman who would put up with you who wants children, you could always adopt."

The Grim growled at his friend.

"Hey don't blame me that you are so afraid that you'll always be left alone when she, no matter which relationship it is at the time, finds out it is almost impossible for you to father children."

Padfoot whimpered and laid his snout on Remus's knee. The Were began scratching Padfoot behind his ears.


	2. Prologue, Part II

**Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. It belongs to Rowling.**

**Author's Note: I give my most grateful thanks to those kind enough to take the time out of their day to review my most humble work.**

**Mentioned here, and in an edit to the first chapter, timeline is ten years ahead of canon. ****Therefore the attack on the cottage at Godric's Hollow is in 1991 rather than 1981, and all dates should be adjusted accordingly.**

* * *

Prologue, Part II: Learning is Important, but so is Living

* * *

It was a week and a half after his birthday, Harry was staring curiously around the workshop as he happily ate a sucker, the walls were covered in countless drawers and cabinets, with a wooden workbench with a few tools laying on it in the middle of the room.

Uncle Moony was talking rapidly in German with the nice old lady who had given him the candy, and even though he could understand them he wasn't paying attention to the conversation. She was a little over five feet tall, with long white hair and a cheerful face. Upon seeing him, she had called him adorable, given him the sucker he had (cherry it was, though he now frowned as he finished it), and told him to call her Granny Alana.

The reason he was able to understand her was because Uncle Moony had paid for all five of them to have a spell cast on them by a native German who spoke the language. The spell allowed all of them to speak and read the language as if they had grown up speaking it. The cost, while not exorbitant to the point of non-purchase, is high enough to discourage most people from randomly learning languages.

The International Confederation of Wizards kept a register of 'approved' vendors for this particular service after a rather appalling number of scams at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, it was relatively easy to find someone who 'sold' the language they needed. Harry found it quite amusing to be able to speak multiple languages, and so when he had asked Moony how many he could learn this way, all he got was a strange stare.

Remus was more than a little startled. One part of the preparation for the emergency contingencies was that both children be taught as many languages as possible, including non-human ones. They had to be able to hide any where in the world if necessary, and here Harry was asking to learn more languages.

So he unleashed his puppy-dog pout, and got a quick 'ask me later, we'll see' before Remus turned away.

Uncle Remus had said it was one of the conditions of all his teachers that he would be able to speak and write in their native language, so he would be learning quite a few other languages. Though he hadn't explained why he was here, other than to respond to that, "No this woman is not going to be one of your teachers."

When Remus and Granny Alana had finished their conversation, she turned to Harry and said, _"Now Little One, I need you to hold still while I cast a few spells to learn more about your magic, it will tickle a little, but I need you to stand as still as you can."_

He nodded vigorously and said, _"I can do that, Granny Alana."_

Pulling out her rather short and stubby wand, she made come complex motions with it while chanting liltingly under her breath. After five minutes she frowned and conjured a chair that she directed Harry to sit in. She then continued casting various spells on the boy for ten more minutes before stopping and repressing a scowl.

Smiling at Harry she said, _"Little One, why don't you go up stairs and see my granddaughter Sophia. She was baking cookies, and they should be just about finished."_

As she and the were watched him leave the room, she scowled as soon as the boy had exited and rounded on the amber eyed man. _"I will not be able to properly make a single wand for him, let alone two, so long as that dark magical... __thing__ is attached to his forehead."_

A look of surprise crossed Remus's face as he quickly asked, _"You actually know what that is? I have been trying to find someone to diagnose whatever it is since I took him back since after that horrible Halloween..."_

Her expression softened and she replied, _"Which meant you haven't taken him to see any specialists who deal with sicknesses that attack one's magic... You are quite fortunate that the spells that narrow down a wand fitting are nearly identical to the diagnostic spells that those kinds of Healers use._

"_The dark magic attached to young Harry's scar is some kind of spiritual remnant of the monster that attacked him. All that I can tell is that the magic of it is trying to feed off of his magic, and it is creating interference. It is also likely why his magic as stabilized so early. It needs to be stable to more effectively fight it off. Likely his magic is also growing more quickly to better fight it."_

Remus frowned for a moment, paging through what he knew of experts on spirit and soul magics before saying, _"Some of the best experts in the world in the branches of magics needed to counter something like this are a few Navaho shaman... Thank you for your time Madam Wilhelm."_

The old woman cackled and said, _"I'm old enough for you to call me Granny Alana, Lycan. My eldest granddaughter is going to be teaching your charge charms until he passes his N-Levels, as I think they are called now, and she lives here with me, so you might as well drop the formality."_

* * *

Since Remus wanted Harry to start learning something about magic, and Ginny had absolutely no interest in starting to study the non-wanded magical subjects early, Harry began his study of Herbology, Magical Creatures, Potions, Runes, and Arithmancy by himself. When it would come time for one of his lessons, he (and often one of his guardians) would walk through one of the portals set into one of the rooms of the house. The portal would take them to the country where the master he would be learning from resided, and he would then take a trip on that nation's Floo Network to where ever he needed to go. And so a month after his birth he started his studies.

His study of Herbology took place at the location of the largest greenhouses in the world in the south of France, l'institut Botanique d'Aquitaine (or the Aquitaine Botanical Institute). The man who owned and ran the Institute, Herbology Grand Master Sigmund Grenouille, had had his life saved at the turn of the century by Charlus Potter, Harry's Great-Grandfather, and was ecstatic to pay back a small part of the debt he owed by doing what he loved, teaching young minds.

Though the lessons only started with him being taught general plant care and how to identify non-magical plants that had magical uses for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday, Harry seemed to enjoy it very much, and started pestering Moony and Padfoot about getting a greenhouse built at their home in New York.

For Magical Creatures, he traveled by Floo to a creature reserve in Montana, where a man named Adam East, whose family owed the Potter family a few favors involving wards to keep something extremely chaotic contained, mostly taught Harry about a number of mostly harmless magical creatures, including crups, kneazles, nifflers, and post owls. None of these creatures interested him as companions, but he liked learning about them anyway. This took place for four hours every Friday.

In a rather large set of personal laboratories in Cairo, Egypt he started learning learning potions from two twins who owed James Potter for saving their lives while they were visiting England during the war. They were attempting to persuade their sister and her husband to leave the country until the hostilities had ended, and had been caught up in an attack in Diagon Alley.

Contrary to popular post-war belief in England, neither of the Potters had been Aurors during the war, and Mukhwsna Pili bin Chenzira bin Bomani and Ata Mosi bin Chenzira bin Bomani had made it known that they felt a debt to the private citizen who fought a trio of terrorists to save their lives.

They currently taught Harry about the preparation of various 'safe' potions ingredients and a number of the more easily understood theories and laws behind the subtle craft of potion-making for an hour and a half each Monday and Wednesday.

In Moscow, he was give tutoring in Arithmancy and non-magical mathematics for an hour every weekday by a Ravenclaw classmate and friend of Lily's named Amanda Silver. She had been in the same year as both of Harry's parents, but being a first generation witch had left England due to a combination of the legislated bigotry and the ongoing conflict involving He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and she had settled nicely into her life in Russia by the time the war was over.

She enjoyed teaching the bright little boy who had her friend's eyes about the magical significance of particular numbers, and since he was nowhere near advanced enough yet for the more complex components of her subject of choice, she had also taken over his teaching of other mathematics, and had found an eager student in both cases.

A man in Buenos Aires, name Juan Carlos whose clan owed a five hundred year old debt to the Potters for introducing their founding father to his wife (Remus did not let Sirius know what this family's debt was), was teaching Harry the basis of what he would need to know for the subjects that involved runes. His job was to get the boy to certain level of proficiency in the basics before he was given to other more invested teachers.

Though at the moment all that included was teaching the boy penmanship, though that was a very broad use of the word. He had him writing on paper and parchment with fountain pens, quills, pencils, and brushes, on solid surfaces with chalk, and in clay with a stylus, in every alphabet he could think of

Teaching a six year old for three hours a week, two on Wednesdays and one on Saturdays, what he taught for a living, and while it was slightly demeaning to teach a student half a dozen years younger than those he normally taught, it was a nice easy service to render to his family in order to resolve a half a millennium old debt.

Remus started teaching Harry a little Magical World History, though it was only in the form of kid friendly stories with a historical basis. Harry seemed to enjoy the adventures of Merlin in particular. He also started doing to same for the mundane world. As a parallel, he seemed to also deeply enjoy the Arthurian legends. And it was generally decided that with how often they were in the mundane world, and the fact that their home had appliances that had been hardened against magic use, there was really no need for the 'Muggle Studies' that was prevalent in any magical culture that had traditional purebloods.

All of his lessons had thus far had an absolute minimum of the endless streams of essays that would be conventional in Hogwarts. Part of this was due to the fact that they were teaching a five year old, though it was also due in no small part that all five of the teachers found that Harry learned best through discussion and hands-on application.

* * *

It was a fortnight after Harry had started his lessons when Sirius took Harry aside one Sunday afternoon into one of the dens in the sprawling household.

"This better not be some prank, Uncle Paddy... 'Else I'll get Gin-gin to play dress-up with your Animagus form again."

Sirius pales at the mention of that particular afternoon. Ginevra was starting to get very persistent in her desire to watch Sirius's 'stories' with him, and the old dog of the Marauders had promised to do any one thing for the little girl if she dropped the issue for a year. He was privately hoping that she would forget that little obsession by the time twelve months had passed. The bad part of this gambit was that he ended up attending a tea party as Padfoot in pink bonnet.

Harry and Moony made certain to have pictures of it.

"Nope, nothing nefarious planned at the moment pup... And I would appreciate it if you never mentioned that little fiasco again. What we are here to discuss is Occlumency."

Harry waited patiently while Sirius just grinned at him. Harry's eyes narrowed into a glare while the mutt's grin just widened. After a three minute long staring contest, Sirius's grin gave way to a puzzled look and he asked, "What?"

Harry rolled his eyes, pointed a small finger at his Dogfather, and exclaimed, "Explain!"

"Oh. Yeah, that might help..." Sirius said as he scratched the back of his head. "We'll this particular branch of magic comes in a few shapes and sizes, but at its most basic, it is the defense of the mind from external threat. No more or less. As it gets more complex, more bells and whistles are added to those defenses, but there are no real expansions in use. Its use in fiction from our world is insane and riddled with uses that fill people who may one day seek to learn the art with overexpectations. There is no way of gaining of instant eidetic memory, no tapping directly into you magical core; not that any such thing even exists, and any defense that includes a detailed mindscape where you store your memories is far too complex to work.

"Though if you are interested in getting a better recall of information, I think Moony knows some meditative exercises that work wonders if you are capable of using them... which I sadly am not.

"What I am going to teach you is the Black family method. Its primary method forgoes all attempts at armoring your mind, and instead what it does is hides your mind. You could be alone in a room with a master Legilimencer, which is one thing they call those who practice Legilimency the magical art of invading another person's mind, and they would not be able to find your mind even with you looking them in the eye."

"Now, normally, I would need an oath from you to not teach this to anyone who is more than four generations removed from the Black bloodline. But the oath I swore has a nice little loophole exploitable because I am Lord Black."

Harry just grins slyly at Sirius.

"Yup, this is just one more way of sticking it to my family, may all the bigoted blighters rot in Hades. Now get comfortable, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing, I am going to be teaching you to medi-ma-tate."

Groaning as he did as (one of) his Godfather(s) said, he knew this would either be very useful, or drive him to take very interesting forms of revenge upon the man.

* * *

It had taken four months of searching through his contacts, and another three of negotiating with the various Navaho tribes he had found, but he had finally found a shaman who was willing to examine and help Harry if he was able.

And so here they were, with Harry sitting on shirtless on an examination bed one would expect to see in a mundane doctor's office with various symbols drawn on his skin in some red paste, some on his chest, stomach, and back, others on his arms, and a few on his head, being examined by an ancient looking Native American who told them to call him Jack.

They were entering the fortieth minute of the exam and Jack had yet to say anything much in English beyond introducing himself and telling Harry to sit as still as possible, when he reached out and touched Harry on the forehead and said, "Sleep."

Maneuvering unconscious boy with strength atypical of those who appear as old as he does, Jack said, "I am glad you brought this young boy to me. There is a fragment of a particularly diseased and vile spirit trying to anchor itself to his soul. I don't know how much longer it would have been before it managed to fully attach itself, but now it is a simple matter of performing what you would call an exorcism, a really simple one at that, and as the spirit has been trying so very hard to anchor itself with young Harry's magic has been fighting it tooth and nail. It should be so weak that when it is expelled it will cease to be.

Before the old man started chanting, he said, "You might want to step back..."

* * *

Two weeks after Harry had the spirit purged from his body, Remus took him to see Granny Alana again, and she was able to, with a few hours of his help, find what would be the best material for his wands. It was another two weeks until she was finished and he could begin his work on the wanded subjects.

He would be learning Charms from Granny Alana's eldest granddaughter Victoria Wilhelm for four hours each week. She was one of the few teachers who would not being doing this because of a debt owed to the Potters, but rather because the two families had known each other and worked together for so long.

She started with the theory behind, and the casting of, a few basic spells, but she also worked on getting him familiar with the most common wand movements in both hands and feeling his magic as he cast his spells.

She had been directed to work his way though the levels of difficulty, first getting him to cast the most basic levels of charms, then cast them both non-vocally or non-somatically (which is often referred to as 'point casting'), followed by combining the two for silent, point cast magics. Following that would worded, wandless magic, which were always non-somatic in nature, finally ending with silent, wandless spells.

She had always though that teaching students silent casting while they were working with simpler spells would work better than attempting to teach the skill post O-level, but all of the parents, guardians, and schools of the students she taught had thus far stuck to the tried and true curriculum. But now the order of the day was to see how far her student could be pushed.

For another four hours each week, Transfiguration was taught to him in New Delhi, India by Swetaketu Suresh, an octogenarian Grand Master of the subject who had become a close friend of Harry's Grandfather Harold Potter had served under him in the Great War. Given what he had first heard from his good friend before his passing about the skill Harry's father had in the field, and had then seen first hand during a few meetings he had had with James and Lily to arrange for Harry's teaching, he wanted to see how talented the boy could become.

Remus had shared with the man James's final battle, and there was no flaw in James's style of combat that he could point out, apart from taking on an opponent far more powerful and skilled than himself.

The teaching started small, both literally and figuratively. Harry was give a wooden circle, two inches in diameter, and was then given a lecture on changing the shape of an object. He was then to change it first into a triangle, then a square, and then other geometric shapes. As he was attempting to do this Surresh would describe how to focus his magic to achieve what he wanted to change. Another exercise he was given was a lecture on changing the color something, handed a square of white cloth, and then guided in changing it various colors.

When these exercises were eventually finished, the difficulty would be increased as he would then be directed to make various three dimensional shapes or patterns of colors. Only after he could perform both advanced exercises to a certain degree he would be given a wooden ball, and have to change the material it was made of. Mastery of all three exercises would have to be demonstrated before he would then be given free reign of inanimate to inanimate transfiguration and directed to transfigure various objects.

By the nature of his teacher's beliefs about the subject matter, all of this transfiguration was taught as wordless, non-somatic magics. Surresh felt that the complex wand movements, incantations, and endlessly complex theories taught to students were merely crutches that never should be used in the first place.

Transfiguration in his mind was thirty percent imagination and visualization, thirty percent strength of will, twenty percent power, and twenty percent hard practice. And that is how he decided he would teach Harry. Teach him to make increasingly complex mental projections of what he wanted to do and use his force of will to translate that picture into magic to change what he desired. Any changes necessary to the lesson plan due to the how the child learned would be made as needed, but if he was right, teaching the hows of Transfiguration was going to become amazingly easy, for the teacher at least.

It would most likely be nothing but a right terror except to the most gifted of students.

There would still be lectures on the hard limits of transfiguration, on what to (and not to) transfigure, on how energy intensive which uses of the subject would be, and many other things.

The last of his wanded subjects was Magical Defense, though the name it was called in an one local changed, it being known as Defense Against the Dark Arts in Britain, was taught by a three-hundred year old man who would only answer to the name Hop, who lived fairly close to Kyoto, Japan.

Sometime in the eighteen hundreds, while Hop was wandering through Europe looking for 'interesting times' he came across a wizard with untameable dark hair protecting a group of women and children from a dozen bandits, half of them being wizards themselves.

He watched for a moment as the dark haired man fought a losing battle before interfering and putting the brigands down. He gave the man a strange coin, saying that no good deed should go unrewarded and that if he or his descendants were ever in need of training in combat, magical or otherwise, they need only throw the coin into a bowl of water, and he would get in contact with them to arrange for it.

It had sat unused a bit of family legend unconfirmed until James had found it in the one of his ancestor's journals, unused after two hundred years.

And so here Harry was, standing beneath a cherry tree, being poked and prodded by a paradox of a little old Japanese man who looked like he was made out of old shoe leather and iron nails, yet the smile on his face and in his eyes reminded the little boy of pictures of Father Christmas.

"_So, Harry-kun, what do you think it is you think you will be learning from me?"_

"_I can honestly say that I haven't the foggiest Hop-sensei. I'm only this many,"_ he said holding up six fingers, three on each hand, trying his darnedest to be adorable.

Chuckling, Hop said, _"Well what I will be teaching you my little student is a combination of things. Chief among my many lessons is to keep you fit. A strong body makes for stronger magic. Once you learn the exercises you are to be taught, you will do them yourself on your own time. Later, I will also be teaching you how to protect yourself without magic, both unarmed and armed."_

Hop stopped, and then grinned rather evilly. Harry felt a shiver run from the base of his spine to top of his neck.

"_But for now, we see how well you run..."_

* * *

A few days after Harry's seventh birthday, and he was laying down in the grass under a tree a hundred or so yards from the house. His eyes were closed as he tried to take a nap, not having much else to due, and not feeling energetic enough to do his normal running about.

He had had a birthday party away from the house for the first time in his life, the chief reason being that Sirius was a Black (who all were by their very natures extremely paranoid) and was also the one in control of the wards around the second most heavily defended private house and grounds on the planet, so he was not willing give anyone access through said wards unless absolutely necessary. And Harry had wanted to invite a few friends from his football (Remus pranked him when ever he called it soccer, though Moony did reward him quite well whenever he called American football 'rugby for wimps') league.

Aunt Hestia had actually been the one to fight for it after it became apparent that he would not be attending public school. She was damn well going to see Harry socialize with kids his age, magical or not. She didn't have many issues with this for Ginny as a few of her co-workers had daughters that Ginevra had hit it off with, but there had been no such luck for Harry. So given how much he kicked around the black and white ball around with anyone in the house, it had seemed like the most obvious thing in the world, though he had also expressed an interest in ice hockey of all things.

She later learned that he watched it with Sirius, who enjoyed watching fights break out on the ice.

She wasn't quite ready to put him in a rather violent sport where the chief form of movement was on razor sharp blades. Truthfully, she'd rather break her promise to keep Harry away from real brooms before the age of nine and then sign him up for junior league Quidditch before she would put Harry in a hockey league.

She vaguely suspected that the crazy haired little boy was forcing her to make just that decision... She admitted to herself that it was entirely possible that she was being paranoid, but two of the three people raising little Harry had been Marauders.

It had done some good, though it did show one thing about Harry's personality that showed up once when he got outside of his 'pack'. It really was something they should have been expecting. Remus had developed a slightly more Alpha male personality after he had become in sync with his inner wolf. With the Marauders cut from four to two, and Sirius recovering from the stint in Azkaban, Remus had taken up James's leading position, and had never really given it up. Harry had apparently developed a 'lead, follow, or get out of the way' attitude somewhere along the way, though he never really came out and said the phrase aloud, and he much preferred to be the one leading.

Harry had made quite a few friends at the expense of making a few annoyances, because he refused to call any antagonistic children within a few years of his age enemies, with this attitude, and there had been a few fights (and a lot of pranks) when a few of the more dominant boys didn't like the fact that he had taken up ad hoc leadership of the team.

And strangely enough to all of his teammates he brought his little sister along to the party. There had been two not so bright guys who complained about being forced to hang around with Ginny, though they were shut up by a glare from Harry that all the members from the team knew meant that something embarrassing would happen to the offending party if ignored. Most of the presents had been attempts by his friends to get him interested in their favorite teams. Otherwise the party had been quite enjoyable.

Thinking about it now, Harry realized that he never really watched football, finding playing the game far more exciting than watching it. In fact the hockey that he watched with Sirius was the only mundane sport that he actively watched, and Aunt Hestia was actively opposed to Harry being taken to any form of Quidditch game. She knew just how violent the game was when played on a professional level, and quite frankly she preferred that he watched hockey.

Not that there were many teams in the States apart from their international team, and they didn't play many games in their home country, getting most of their games in as exhibitions against other countries' national league teams. Most of his exposure to Quidditch was rebroadcasts on the the Wizarding Wireless (though a group of enterprising first generation wizards and witches had found a way to make electronics work in magical environments, no one had yet to find an effective way of mass-transmitting video recordings securely enough to be safe from mundane people, though it wasn't for a lack of trying), though Sirius was getting to the point where he was going to hire someone to record matches for him...

And then he had the idea of buying the broadcasting rights to various games and then marketing the recordings. He was in contact with his solicitors within forty-eight hours. The Black fortune started growing quite a bit soon after.

Sirius got his Quidditch fix, and then some. Harry however was left high and dry, because Hestia had threatened to decrease Sirius's chances of producing an heir from slim to none if Harry was shown even one frame of the game. It wasn't fair, really it wasn't. And he couldn't get even with her...

The only reason the Hestia was generally immune to retaliation via pranking was that the elves were more likely to listen to 'the lady of the house' and they cooked two out of three of the meals a day. Harry had had one too many encounters with the vile brussels sprout to risk her wrath again.

He sighed and opened his eyes, staring up into the tree above him. From what he knew, his magical education was as far from normal as anyone could get. He knew that the vast majority of magical teaching started at the age of eleven, largely due to the fact that almost all magical children had stable magic by that age.

Most teaching occurred one of three ways. The first was pioneered (at least in the western magical world) by the Four Founders of Hogwarts, and could be most easily paralleled to public education of modern day. The next was an Apprenticeship, in which a Master taught his or her apprentice one on one, and could last a very variable period of time, depending on how much of what the Master knows is being taught to the apprentice. The last was vaguely similar to what was going on with Harry, tutors hired to teach one or more (though no more than a few) students.

What was different was that all of his teachers, save for Señor Carlos (who had started teaching him about the various runic alphabets after about three months of working on his ability to write) and maybe Hop-sensei, all held Masteries in the specific subject they were teaching. He sat up, remembering that two of his teachers were Grand Masters of their subjects. He was vaguely aware of how good you had to be at a field of magic to even try for a Grand Mastery, and had heard Moony mention to Aunt Hestia that there were anywhere between one and two dozen Grand Masters in any given magical discipline.

He was being taught with the intention to excel... and he was more than a little worried at why that was. He also wondered just what Hop-sensei had in the way of credentials, and how much he was going to be run into the ground by the old man for asking...

* * *

It was early April as he laid beneath a cherry tree at the house in Kyoto. His tenth birthday was in a week short of four months, and while his advancement in the three wanded (or they would be for the vast majority of students) subjects. He was only roughly equivalent to a student somewhere in the middle of second year for Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense, though the amount of polish he had on the spellwork for what he did know was at or beyond students gearing up to take their International N-Levels (or as the Brits refer to them, NEWTs).

Ginny had been more than a little miffed at first that Harry was also learning 'real' magic so much sooner than she would, but the point eventually got though that it would hurt her talent if she started learning actual spells before her magic was ready.

In charms, he was finally capable of casting either non-verbally or non-somatically shortly after learning a spell, and the combination of the two skills was becoming much easier. His worded, wandless magics were intermittent at best, and his wandless, silent casting was still non-existent. His grasp on the theory of the subject however was phenomenal, probably due in part to his understanding of Arithmetic equations behind the spells he was using.

His transfiguration had finally advanced beyond both the three exercises that had driven him to near madness and inanimate to inanimate transfiguration, and Grand Master Suresh was confident enough in his visualization and ability to begin animate to inanimate transfiguration. Master Suresh had stated with supreme confidence that the hard part was over, and he would advance through the coursework much more quickly now.

Defense was behind where he would be if he had attended a normal magic school not because of a heavy focus on the basics, but rather because Hop-sensei taught so much in addition to what he would normally learn. To prepare him for his eventual International O-Levels (of which the Brit equivalent was the fifth year OWLs) he was slowly taught a number of spells that would have a broad use in a fight, the complete catalog of which being a moderate cutting curse, a heavy bludgeoning hex, a pair of piercers that could be easily alternated for a rather effective spell chain, a set relatively weak blasting and exploding curses, an arc concussion hex, a few lesser elemental curses, the standard stunning spell, and a trio shields; a power fixed shield and a weaker mobile one for hexes and curses with the third being a mobile kinetic barrier the size of a riot shield.

He was also slowly given assigned reading on most of the 'tamer' Dark Creatures, the more monstrous of which were saved for N-Levels. Hop-sensei also spent at least half an hour a week on identifying what spells were being thrown your way. It was drilled into Harry's head to dodge anything that looked either green or yellow, unless he advanced to Mastery level in Transfiguration, then he would be more than capable of conjuring physical barriers capable of blocking the Unforgivables.

Having talked with all three of his teachers, Remus had concluded that he would likely be ready to take his first set of standardized tests for this subjects in somewhere to a year and a half to two years.

As for his other magical subjects, he had advanced to some point in late fourth to early fifth year, with one exception. In potions, he was a more than adequate brewer, capable of following and completing the directions on almost all of the potions his teachers had given him, though they were disappointed that he lacked the inborn talent and technique that marks most Potions Masters. Mukhwsna and Ata had truthfully told him that he was more than capable of doing very well on N-Level for the subject, but going after a Mastery was going to be an excessive amount of extremely hard work, and there were probably other fields of magic that he was better suited for. They had already wished him good luck for when he finished his time with them, as he would be having a new teacher after he finished the O-Level coursework with them.

In Herbology, he again was doing quite well, and while he enjoyed gardening at home, his teacher sadly noted the innate love of growing things that marked those who devoted themselves to the field. Harry had already decided that while he would pursue a N-Level in this subject, if only to familiarize himself with potentially deadly (or amusing) plants, it was not something he truly wanted to do for a long period of time.

His Arithmancy was advancing at a fair clip, it being one of the farthest along of all his classes. The two chief branches of the subject were given equal basis, and he would then be given the choice to pursue one more deeply during N-Level study. The first, the predictive equations and computations, along with the magical properties of certain numbers, was covered in broad strokes, with the simplest uses being given for practical work. The second was the mathematics of power behind the spells he was being taught, the often complicated and sometimes horribly lengthy mathematical constructs that described what the magic was doing. His first practical work in this subject was the light spell, _lumos_, and its counter, _nox_.

Magical Creatures promised to eventually become much more interesting after the family found out Harry was a Parselmouth during a trip to the zoo for Ginny's seventh birthday. They had gotten separated from Harry after the Reptile House, and when they finally realized that he was no longer with them, Remus activated the tracking charm that he kept on Harry (he also kept one on both Ginevra and Padfoot) whenever they went out into public.

They found him deep in a conversation with a Komodo dragon. Not only were they surprised that he was demonstrating an extremely rare magical ability, he had now shown that he wasn't only limited to snakes, but usable on most reptiles.

They were having trouble convincing Hestia to allow Harry to visit a Dragon Reserve in Romania.

The animals they had been studying had gotten more interesting (and therefore almost always more dangerous) including Salamanders, Ashwinders, Jarveys, and Diricawls. There were no creatures more dangerous than the British Ministry's class XXX, though there were a few class XXXX slated to be covered before the O-Levels, that is until a Quetzalcoatl decided to crash the class...

* * *

The lesson on mooncalves, having been rearranged to take place during the night of a full moon, was just wrapping up when Harry was dive bombed by something that had both feathers and scales. Before he fully knew what was happening, a meter and a half long snake with wings had loosely coiled its vibrant green body around his torso while it rested its rainbow colored wings on his shoulders.

_§So, I heard from Ouroboros, who heard from Osiris, who said Jormungadr, who, all three by the way are not the ones from legends they are just pretentious bastards, was told by Jack, that you speak the serpent tongue. You talked to Jack a few months ago in a zoo in New York. Is it true?§_

Confused and cautiously, Harry replied, _§Yes... Why?§_

_§Because you can only spend about a century and a half talking to snakes before you get really bored with them. You're human, we speak the same language, and I've got a bunch of nifty powers comparable to those of phoenixes... no wait that doesn't sound right... phoenixi? Bah, whatever, whatever the plural of phoenix is._

_§I can travel, and bring people and things with me, in a burst of lightning. What phoenix tears do for critical wounds, by venom does for long term health. And yes, there really are idiots out there who dump large fortunes on getting a supply of phoenix tears to use as a preventative treatment and it does jack shit for them. I may not be able to sing uplifting songs like those fiery turkeys can, but I am an awesome conversationalist.§_

Adam East stared blankly at Harry and the incredibly rare magical creature that had wrapped itself around him. "What is going on Harry?"

Glancing at his teacher for a moment Harry said, "This wiseguy is trying to talk me into keeping him... Aren't I supposed to beg my parents to let me keep the animal that follows me home?"

_§Oh, and I can do this!§_ There was a blurring of light, and where the snake was on Harry, there was now a bright green leather jacket with rainbow colored wing designs going from the shoulders to the cuffs. _§And I can still talk while I'm doing it... Though I serve next to no protective value other than keeping the weather off you. Though if you don't like me as a jacket, I can make myself into a nifty overshirt.§ _The serpent shifted again and it was now a bright green button up long sleeve shirt that was open at the front, with the selfsame rainbow colored wing design on the shoulders and arms. _§Sadly I can't do anything longer than your waist... I wish I could become a badass longcoat. But sadly I can't... So how about it, do you need a familiar?§_

Harry sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and then asked, _§Just what are you and what is your name?§_

The snake shift back to its natural form and said, _§I'm a Quetzalcoatl, and my name is Jean-Claude Van Damn I Look Good!§_

Harry glared slightly at the snake whose head was resting on his left shoulder.

_§No? Well then, hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.§_

Harry glared a bit more, though he did have to suppress a chuckle.

_§Okay, okay. My name is Raiden. Seriously.§_

* * *

And he wouldn't take no as an answer. So Harry gained a rare magical familiar, and they quickly became fast friends. Harry actually started watching the telly for more than his hockey fix and Raiden was actually very good company. The winged serpent was currently lazing on a branch in the tree above Harry, and was likely asleep.

Astronomy was taught by Uncle Remus mostly as a mundane subject since the ICW only issued a pass certificate on the class due to its rather central usefulness in how the alignment of certain stars and planets have an effect on ritual magic. The written would be on these various effects, while the practical would be to make and label a star chart. Moony went over the required materials enough that he would only need the help of the recall meditation exercise if he drew a blank on certain star names.

Runes, however turned out to be a whole different kettle of fish. In a school environment it is the one class that progresses the slowest from theoretical study to practical use. The entirety of the three years prior to O-Levels are by and large spent teaching the three of the most commonly used runic alphabets (though the wizarding definition of the word was far different than the mundane textbook definition of it), the meaning and uses of each of the runes, how to properly transcribe them, and some history on each of the alphabets. What had surprised everyone was that Harry was so adept at the subject that it was more than a little disturbing.

He had ended up tearing through more than the entirety of the O-Level, including the three or so months spent solely working on his ability clearly write, in a little over thirteen months, while having an additional four runic alphabets to work with. He sat the International O-Level in that subject in November of Nineteen-Ninety-Seven.

In the ICW testing office in Oslo, Norway, he tore through that exam in record time, and the score he got was so unbelievable they graded the test a second time. In truth there were a total of eight possible letter grades that could be assigned as a final score to an exam, but the two at the farthest ends of the spectrum were so rare as to be something of a legend among students, as they were only awarded once or twice every twenty years on given continent, and one about every three years internationally, across all subjects put together. At the low end of a subject, a failure so dismal as to be a thing of true shame, the F, for Flobberworm. At the other end of the grading spectrum were passes so high that whenever the grade was received, the written test would be double checked, and a pensieve memory of the practical reviewed. The ever elusive M, the Magnificent.

Harry became both the youngest person to pass the Study of Runes O-Level, and the youngest recipient of the M grade. It was at that point that his studies under Señor Carlos ended, and it became apparent what the largest debt his parents had called in was.

It seemed that the goblin clan of Gringotts London had owed the House of Potter a massive favor. They had hired out, for a greatly reduced price, their top Warder, Curse Breaker, and Enchanter as tutors. The lessons had taken place in London branch office, and from his first teacher he learned to create runic ward anchors, build a number of common wards, and tie them together into a single ward platform. His second teacher taught him how to analyze, circumvent, and destroy the wards other than his own. His last teach taught him how to use rune arrays to imbue magic into objects, either to enhance the items current capabilities or to allow it to do something it would not normally do, for example a the former could be used to make it so that a knife would never dull, while the later could cause the same knife to carry an electrical charge, shocking those that it cuts. A fourth teacher for one more area the field of Runes was capable of had been lined up, a Runes Master who was one of the leaders in the field of Symbolic Casting, the art of transforming the Arithmetic equation of a spell into a runic diagram and cast a spell that way. He spent two hours each week with each of his tutors in these facets of the field of runic magic, and proceeded to advance at a rate that was comparable to how he covered the O-Level material.

So it was a fourteen months after he had taken his Runes O-Level that he repeated his previous feat of utterly decimating the N-Level for the subject, again being the youngest to ever pass the Runes N-Level, and being the fifth person on record to have gotten two M grades since the ICW had instituted its standardized tests back in the mid Seventeen hundreds. He continued to study under all of Runes teachers, who had been contracted to teach him all they could, not just get him past the N-Levels.

He was broken out of his doze when he heard bare feet pad softly through the grass, and saw his sister take a seat beside him. Ginny smiled softly at him as she spoke in flawless Japanese, "You don't usually stare at the cherry blossoms for so long..."

"Tired. Getting prepared for the O-Levels I will be taking in August is exhausting. Any particular reason why you felt the need to come over just as I was starting to doze off? I could really do with a nap..."

She gazed at him sharply for a few moments, inspecting her brother for any obvious defects before saying, "You do look tired, are you sleeping well?"

"Most days, though I'm not sleeping as deeply as I usually do..."

"Then get Uncle Remus to brew you up a sleeping potion, or whip one up yourself, once every week. It'll probably help if you enough sleep without you becoming dependent, or worse addicted, to them."

He rubbed at the faded scar on his forehead and sighed, "I'll talk to Moony about it later."

He remember when the scar had been much clearer, how it had caused a dull ache in his head that would never go away.

"Aunt Hestia is back at home and wants to talk to you about something, though she wouldn't tell me what."

* * *

**Secondary Author's Note: My apologies for any errors (chiefly my use of Babel fish for the French location name and the attempt at researching and the attempt at using Arabic naming conventions).**

**Update schedule for this story (an amazing thing for me) will be once a week, on Saturdays. I may write more, but that will go into a buffer so that it will actually update weekly.**

**Current Buffer Status: Prologue Part III (of III) finished, save for proofing.  
**


	3. Prologue, Part III

**Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. It belongs to Rowling.**

**Author's Note: I give my most grateful thanks to those kind enough to take the time out of their day to review my most humble work.**

**Continuing Note: Timeline is ten years ahead of canon, i.e. 1991 is now 2001, etc etc.  
**

* * *

Prologue, Part III: An End to the Exile

* * *

It was early-June of 2001, and because Harry's Potions teacher insisted that he live with him for one week every month in order to properly learn how to prepare potions with longer brew times, he was writing out an essay at a kitchen table in Ireland, on a length of parchment with a quill. Nicolas Flamel, the Immortal Alchemist, was a dire taskmaster, and if it was good enough when he had been a student, it was good enough for any student of his. He didn't have any issues with it since he had started learning with that particular set of writing media, and had stayed in practice for no other reason that it was easier to transfigure a quill than a fountain pen or pencil even, but all his other teachers saw how much easier pens and actual paper were... He muttered a few choice curses in Irish as his writing blotched unexpectedly, only to be whacked upside the head with a wooden spoon. And the other permanent resident of the estate, Perenelle Flamel, who spoke far more languages than Harry did, was quite intolerant of any swearing. In addition to teaching Harry NEWTs level potions Nicolas had also begun teaching Harry the 'ancient art of Alchemy'.

Unlike what most people believed, Alchemy was not an offshoot of the potions discipline, but a little explored branch of runic magic. But rather than the charms and the other specific effects of the more common, if extremely difficult, branch of symbolic casting, or the use of runes to anchor wards, Alchemy focused on creating transfiguration effects, though the alterations made with Alchemy would be properly called transmutations.

It was also the most difficult of all the branches of runic magic he had studied. The number of sciences that Nicolas was having him get familiar with was daunting. His Transfiguration teacher had drilled him some understanding of various sciences to make him more aware of what he was turning into what, but this was taken to a whole new level.

It did wonders for his practical skill in Transfiguration however.

Harry had learned something interesting about the family history, and it was also one of the reasons why his potions teacher (more than likely it was a directive from the man's wife) had been so insistent about his staying there so often, that he hadn't gotten around to reading about yet in what little he had seen in the Potter family records. Apparently, for the first two and a half centuries of their lives, the Flamels had used to have children every fifty years or so. The problem was that these children, though they always lived to be adults, had always encountered problems when they sought to begin families of their own. Since each child had been born after they had begun extending their lives through the use of the Philosopher's Stone, they had eventually come to the conclusion that something in the magic of the Elixir of Life caused the children to remain childless.

The only exception to this had been their first born, a daughter. She had come into their lives before Nicolas had stumbled onto the process to make the Philosopher's Stone, and was grown, married, and had a family of her own when her parents had achieved immortality. Her married name had been Potter, or what it had passed as in the language of the time.

So when he wasn't being taught, they had insisted that he call them Grandmother and Grandfather, even though there were a number of Greats that should have been in there. And even though he still occasionally bugged Grandfather buy throwing the occasional Great in there (or even the one time he had used the full fourteen or so that there should be), he avoided doing the same to Grandmother, because he did not enjoy the taste of soap (for some bizarre reason, he used some of the foulest language in any of two dozen languages and only get whacked with a spoon, but the moment he cast aspersions upon her age, he would get his mouth washed out with the worst tasting soap in existence). Though that was when Nicolas wasn't teaching, but when he was he was to be referred to as Master.

A few months earlier, Ginevra's magic had stabilized, and sh had finally started her her lessons in the wanded subjects, along side the other standard first year subjects. Though she didn't learn under the Masters that Harry did, but Remus and Sirius hired very capable tutors for her, and her education was proceeding along a slightly more traditional path than her brother's had, though it had also been slower, in part due to Remus wanting to ensure she could seek employment in the mundane world later in life if she wanted, and in case she changed her mind and want to attend a magical school with her peers, so she wouldn't be too far ahead.

She really liked to rub Harry's nose in the fact that she didn't seem to be having as many issues with her spellwork that he had had. Harry believed his sister needed to be introduced to either the joys him sticking her to the ceiling for twelve hours with a silent wandless spell or being forced to perform each of her charms at the levels sixth and seventh years would perform them.

Nicolas was reading some post he had received that morning, while Perenelle was reading a Science Fiction novel, and he offhandedly said, "Apparently Albus believes that Voldemort is still alive and is going to make an attempt on the Stone."

The nib of the quill Harry was using snapped, ruining the section of work he had been doing. "Damn it, I just fixed that!"

He got whacked with a wooden spoon as Perenelle admonished, "Language, Harry!"

Rolling his eyes, Harry said, "Of all the things I thought that I was going to hear today, that was not among the list, Grandfather."

"Yes, well, he goes on to say that he wants to move it from its high security Gringotts vault to protections of his own devising at Hogwarts."

Perenelle put her own two cents in, "Is he mad? Putting a highly sought after magical artifact in a school full of children when the most dangerous Dark Lord since the one that kicked off a World War is after it is not a sound plan."

"Yes, well even if I say no, from what I remember of the Albus, he'll probably just make it seem like I entrusted him with the Stone and then hide a fake in the school anyway. That boy really loves his games. Our real problem is what to do about protecting the Stone if it's security has really been compromised."

Harry commented as both adults lapsed into silence, "Well, Grandpa, it depends on whether you still want to keep the stone as far from you as possible?"

"And if we were willing to hide it here, what would you suggest young man?"

"Short of dropping a Fidelius on the entire property?

Perenelle quirked one elegant eyebrow at this offhand comment, and asked, "Why would you of all people trust the Fidelius Charm, Harry? I think it proved its fallibility with what happened to dear Lily and James..."

"Because, in my own opinion, if you show someone that you trust them enough to ask them to be your Secret Keeper, and the spell actually takes, they should trust you enough to offer up some kind of heavily binding oath not to reveal the secret without your consent. That's where my parents failed... Though Moony has spoken a few times about the face that he and Padfoot have come up with a rather frightening number of holes and inconsistencies they think Dumbledore is guilty of causing. A rather large number of those are concurrent with the planning of my parents going into hiding..."

The older couple were silent for a few minutes as Harry turned his attention to the ruined piece of parchment and began copying what he had already written onto a new sheet.

"And if we were not willing to have it here?"

Harry replied without looking up from his work, "Find some property you own in the middle of nowhere, ward the sucker into a veritable fortress, place the Stone in a heavily warded box, bury the da... darn thing, then pop a Fidelius about a yard in diameter over it. Make sure the Secret Keeper does not have a fortified mind, and is willing to under go a full blown Obliviate to remove the location from his or her mind, with those things combined together you've got an impenetrable Secret. It will work because it the Secret is not Kept in the mind but rather the soul."

They both stared at the young man in silence for the next fifteen minutes as he worked on his paper. A ten (almost eleven, he would protest whenever his age was brought up) year old had just closed the largest hole in one of the most powerful protective Light magics in existence in two separate ways in less than five minutes.

Smiling as he finished his essay and Harry asked, "I've done my homework, now can I _please_ go flying?"

They both shared a worried look... Harry had gotten his first broom a year ago, when the Oath Sirius had made (and yes, Lily had literally forced Sirius Black to swear a magical oath) had finally terminated when Harry had turned ten. Some of the things that the boy got up to in the air scared the living daylights out of the two of them...

"Actually, I have a bit of a practical joke that I want to play later on this year..."

* * *

Remus made sure that Harry had a set of powerful owl confusion and redirection spells on him when he was within Owl Post range of Britain during July and August of Two-thousand-and-one, and so had managed to avoid any and all letters from Hogwarts. But in preparation to the fact that the Old Man had never found out Harry had been taken out of the 'care' of the Dursleys, Remus made a trip to Privet Drive...

* * *

Remus fidgeted slightly as he readjusted the tie of his rather expensive Versace suit, and he glared at Sirius, who looked comfortable in his Gucci suit. Between the two of them, they had decided that Vernon would be suitably impressed by the show they would put on, and with little greasing of the wheels, these people would do what they wanted them to.

As he stepped out out of the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph they had hired for the day, all three of the Dursleys had already stepped out of the house and were staring open mouthed at the display they were putting on...

As Sirius stepped out of the car on the far side, he said, "Well Remus, my old chum, this should be like stealing candy from a baby..."

* * *

The owls were not taking the Hogwarts acceptance letters to Harry Potter, even though Minerva McGonagall knew that the wee bairn was with Lily's horrid sister... Minerva made sure to remind Albus of his misdoing in actually sealing the custody articles in the Potters' wills before anyone else could see them when the two documents had shown up in the Wizengamot in early February of '92, saying that "It is imperative to the Greater Good (she had seen a pensieve memory of the event and she could actually hear the capital Gs in the words) that only I know where the Boy-Who-Lived is. It is the only we can be certain of his safety."

Sirius Black had made an impassioned speech about how frightening a precedent this could set, but as the magical seal had already been placed at the Chief Warlock's prerogative. It was then a fight between the rights of the Ancient Houses and the powers available to those in charge. It had been decided that the first truly legitimate concern raised about Harry's safety, the seal would be removed, and custody granted according to law, though laws were quickly passed due to the worry of just how much malfeasance someone could get up with just these powers over an orphan, though no attempts were made to go through the orphan records to see if there was any on going misdeeds.

So, on July 31st she took the letter and decided to deliver it her self.

As she made her way up the walk to the front door of Number 4 Privet Drive, dressed in a rather severe women's business suit, she shook her head. Even though little Harry would have been raised to be an absolute hellion by Sirius, it was most likely going to be preferable to whatever it was she would find here.

After knocking on the door, it was answered by a thin and tallish, blond-haired woman who was currently pursing her teeth. Minerva was surprised at how much the expression made the woman look like a horse.

Professor McGonagall spoke crisply, having never liked what she had heard (or seen) of Lily's sister, "I am here to deliver Harry's acceptance letter to Hogwarts."

Petunia smiled a nasty little smirk, and grabbed a letter that had been sitting on the table near the door since earlier in the month. Those two men were quite right that someone from that world would be visiting sooner rather than later. They had been so well dressed that she had been amazed that they consorted with those freaks like her sister.

"He isn't here, hasn't been since sometime in the January or February after he was dropped on our stoop. Good riddance I say. Two men who were here earlier this month gave us this letter to pass on to your kind."

Minerva's eyes widened at what the woman had said as Petunia made to slam the door in the Transfiguration Mistress's face, but the Professor whipped her wand out, saying, "You and I have much to talk about."

Five minutes later, McGonagall had gotten descriptions of the two men (she smiled grimly at the antics of those two mad miscreant Marauders), though it had taken threats of turning her son into a pig and her husband into a walrus to get what she wanted. As she read the letter that was quite insulting to Dumbledore (not that the old fool didn't deserve it), though she felt great relief that the two Marauders had saved Harry from that horrible home... She idly wondered how the Ministry would react to Harry's real guardians kidnapping him.

She was fairly certain that the 'kidnapping' would cause the custody articles of the Wills to be unsealed, and due to the 'kidnapping' having been by the legal guardians, Harry would stay right were he was, with his family.

She was actually quite thankful to prank that Sirius and Remus were playing. A rift between her and her daughter had formed shortly after the war had ended. She wouldn't admit it, but she didn't remember what the fight that caused it was about, and it was likely her daughter couldn't either. Dumbledore seeming to divide the only family two men and two children had left had made her realize just how foolish she had been.

And taking into account the family stubbornness, the differences between her and her daughter Selene would have likely never been solved... and she would not have been visiting her and her granddaughter a year ago when one of Selene's experiments had almost killed her.

She smiled as she turned on her heel, deciding to go visit her family, especially her wonderful granddaughter Luna, before trying to figure out just how to contact Sirius and Remus... if only to send them a memory of Albus reading the letter.

* * *

As Harry snuck through halls of the ancient castle, exploring a bit before he got onto the 'errand' he had been sent here on, he was fairly certain that the adults in his life considered the first actual year of the new millennium to be the official "Mess with Albus 'I have too many names' Dumbledore" year. First Remus and Sirius leave a very nasty letter with his mother's sister (he and Ginny had been pranked when they were younger whenever they had referred to the woman as an Aunt), that eventually made its way to the man (and they had received an amusing pensieve memory from a woman that was going to visit them sometime over the Christmas holidays).

Now Grandfather Nicolas had heard about the third floor corridor on the right hand side being out of bounds to 'everyone who does not wish to die a most painful death'.

Considering that the Flamels had bought a square mile of land in the Australian Outback and hidden the Stone just as he had suggested (Sirius had been asked to be the Secret Keeper, though they had settled on him giving an Oath rather than the use of Memory spells), Nicolas wanted to mess with the meddler's mind for presuming to bait a trap with rumors of his Stone.

It was Halloween, and even though he was wrapped in a powerful invisibility spell, that was not what was hiding him from the castle's wards. He touched the piece of fabric that was wrapped around his body beneath the poofy shirt that was a part of his pirate costume. The Invisibility Cloak. All capital letters there. An artifact that had been in the Potter family since Ignotus Peverell's only grandchild, one Alexandria Peverell, had married into the family.

Though Remus theorized that its invisibility magic could be circumvented by another of the Hallows (but both the Stone and Wand were assumed lost at the moment), the rest of the magic in the object worked to prevent a user of Peverell descent from being detected by any magic.

He was jarred out of his thoughts when he smelled a great stink and heard extremely heavy foot steps. His eyes widened as he saw a full grown European Mountain Troll wandering around the supposedly safest place in Britain, and it was heading for a door, which meant it had likely gotten the scent of some sort of prey.

Pulling both of his wands, he conjured a large anvil with one while simultaneously applying a charm to increase it's weight by a factor of ten with the other. The troll never really stood a chance. Raiden snickered at the stupid creature's fate.

Sighing he continued on to the third floor corridor... If someone had let a troll into the school (and Dumbledore had allowed it through the wards), it meant that whoever was after the stone was going to be making a run against the defenses...

Ghosting into the third floor corridor, he saw a greasy haired man limping away, trailing blood. Harry idly wondered how the hell Snape screwed up. Remus, no matter his own opinions about the man concerning his ideology and actions, had always said that Severus Snape was a more than competent wizard. Shrugging, Harry sent a detecting charm down the hallway, and with no other living presences, entered the room the git had exited from.

Harry paused for a moment, seeing a goddamn Cerberus. He then waved the wand in his left hand, casting a spell that caused a lullaby to sing through the air. Levitating the dog off a trapdoor he had seen, he dropped down the hole.

As Harry regained his balance from the fall, Raiden whispered in his ear, _§Devil's Snare...§_

Nodding, Harry fired off a few bursts of flame that caused the plant to slink away. Shaking his head at the simplicity of the first two defenses, he walked through the door into the next room, which had a mass of something flying around the ceiling. Idly, he wave his wand while he said, "_Accio_ key to that door."

No dice. Shrugging, he started blasting the keys out of the air. As much as he wanted to use one of the brooms he saw leaning against the wall, he would rather cause a bit of havoc. Finally felling a a heavily made silver key that seemed to match the door fixtures, Harry made his way into the next room... But not before taking five minutes to transfigure all the air above seven feet into a highly volitile mixture. After going into the next room, he left a flame that would slowly rise in the key chamber.

Looking around, the room he was in contained a massive animated chess set. Rolling his eyes he said to Raiden, _§I really don't feel like playing a game of chess, can you burst me to the other side of the room.§_

_§Righto, cause watching a chess match is even more boring than playing one, even if the pieces are larger than life and extremely violent.§_

In a burst of electricity, Harry was behind the white chess pieces, and he made his way through the next door. Though right before he exited the chess room, the door from the key chamber was blown off by a massive explosion.

In the next room, he found an even larger Mountain Troll than the one he had dealt with earlier. Now he was upset, there were two trolls in a school, and this one had been placed with the consent of the headmaster. He hosed the Troll down with simple water charm, transfigured the water into another (semi)fluid, and then conjured a lit torch that he threw at the now confused creature.

Trolls may have incredibly thick skin that turns away both weapons and spells... but expose them to completely mundane fire and they go up like dry kindling.

Douse one in napalm and... well...

Harry idly cast an area silencing spell to drown out the dark creature's agonized screams as he walked through the next door. As he walked toward the dais that had seven bottles on it, two walls of flame, one black ahead of him and one of purple behind, sprang into existence. Reading a bit of parchment and rereading the riddle on it a few times, and he idly snatched up the smallest bottle. Walking toward the black flames he drank it and then directed Raiden to burst over to him once he cleared the flames.

As he entered the next, and apparently last, room, and Raiden reappeared on his shoulders he said, "You may not be a parrot to go with the costume, but you put those avians to shame."

_§Thanks, amigo.§_

The only object in this was a mirror with the script '_Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi'_ running above the glass. He paled and stepped to the side so that he wouldn't stare into the glass.

"The Mirror of Erised is a class X cursed object. What the hell is Dumbledore using it as part of defenses that any post-OWL student could get past? It should have been destroyed the moment the old man found it... That... thing... has resulted in over a hundred deaths and over triple that number of raving lunatics!"

He fumed silently for a moment before asking, _§Any ideas Raiden?§_

_§Apart from staring into the highly enchanted, madness inducing mirror and hope for the best?§_

_§Yes, besides that.§_

_§Well since Bumblebee thinks he is so clever, the mirror is probably being forced to only show things related to the 'Stone'. So the chance of madness is at a minimum, so look into the mirror and hope for the best.§_

_§If I go mad and die, I am so haunting you.§_

Moving back to stand directly in front of the looking glass and saw his reflection holding up a blood-red bit of rock, staring into its depths. His reflection winked as it placed the stone into his pocket, and Harry felt a weight settle into his actual pocket. Turning away from the Mirror, he took the stone out and stared at it, identifying it as just a chunk of ruby, he sighed and placed it back in the pocket as he tore off a chunk of one of his sleeves.

Moving back to the side so that he wasn't in danger of becoming ensnared by the magic of the damn thing, he tossed the scrap of cloth at the mirror while casting an engorgement charm to make it larger than a bed sheet and then briefly animating the sheet to wrap around the mirror.

"Hopefully Grandfather will have an idea how to destroy this damn thing," Harry said as he shrunk the wrapped mirror down until it was small enough to fit in his pocket.

* * *

During mid-May of the next year, and Harry was once more sitting at the Flamel kitchen table. It was morning and he was diligently working his way through a bowl of oatmeal that he had charmed to repel his hair. Harry, in an childish attempt to make his hair (which he had found out a few weeks after meeting his 'grandparents' was literally cursed) more controllable, had been growing his hair out since he had been six years old. Now, a few months shy of the age of twelve, he had a thick mane of jet back hair that stopped just past his shoulders, and the more than occasional lock of unruly hair stuck out from it at an odd angle.

He had failed at attempting to control it, and had stopped trying.

The Flamels had told him that the hair came from Nicolas, who had the ill fortune to irritate a gypsy who had then cursed him and his male descendants to have uncontrollable hair. They had been working for more than six hundred years to fix it, using both magic and modern hair care products, and had failed miserably.

There was a knock at the door that lead to the back garden, and Nicolas and Perenelle shared a startled look that Harry missed, focused as he was on his food. And they both drew their wands, placing them on the table, before Perenelle called out, "Enter!"

A tall man, in flowing plum colored robes, who had a long silver hair with an accompanying beard and twinkling blue eyes, spoke respectfully, "Master Flamel, Lady Flamel, I am in need of your help..."

Nicolas sighed and said chidingly, "Albus, you know that we don't become involved in the events of the world at large."

"I know, Nicolas, but I need your advice. Someone has opened Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, and the monster that was contained with has been rampaging through the school. Four muggleborn students, a cat, and a ghost have been petrified, and now the Board of Governors have removed me as Headmaster, so I cannot do anything about it. I am at my ropes end at how to protect the children..."

Harry slurred out a bit sleepily, although quite audibly, knowledge that he had gained when he turned eleven and the Goblins had done a lineage trace for him, "The basilisk should know better than to harm students. Salazar always wrote that Isis was such a good girl. No one besides Slytherin's line should even be able to remotely influence her, and she would know better than to listen to orders given to her by Aldric's descendants, who would be the only ones inclined to use her in such a way..."

Albus Dumbledore simply stared at the preteen who hadn't really registered to his senses. He had a long unruly mop of jet black hair, was a little short for his age, and was slumped over a bowl of food. He idly wondered when Nicolas had picked up a new apprentice. The boy had not even looked up from his breakfast when he had given a statement about Slytherin's monster, '_A basilisk, this is worse than I thought!_', and now Dumbledore was trying to figure out how to manipulate more information out of the young man when he spoke again, "Grandfather, I'll need to head to Gringotts to pick up a few things from the Slytherin ancestral vault before I head to Hogwarts to try and fix the Supreme Warlock's mess. With your permission?"

Perenelle fixed the boy who still had his gaze locked on his oatmeal with a glare and asked, "You are not planning on fighting a thousand year old serpent are you?"

"Not if I can't help it. Though it is quite possible that she has gone around the twist and I may have to put her out of her misery."

"And how is that different?"

"Its quite simple, in a fight I run the chance of getting bitten and mutilating the vastly valuable carcass of the ancient basilisk and putting Isis out of her misery involves me Transfiguring a rock into a rooster and Compelling it to crow."

"Well then if you do have to kill the poor thing do just that deary, make sure you eat your breakfast first. When do you think you'll be back?"

"Not a bloody clue, I also want to find out who the hell is doing this since the only one who could is without a body at the moment... I need to write to the rest of my tutors... I wonder if they'll accept the excuse that I have to save a school from a dark creature..."

Dumbledore stared in shock at this young man, who blandly spoke of killing an ancient basilisk with two pieces of magic that could be done by any adult witch or wizard who had passed their Charms and Transfiguration NEWTs (or even their OWLs). But when he had looked up and Albus had seen the boy's green eyes behind a pair of glasses, he had nearly fainted. After Harry's Hogwarts letter had been failed to be delivered and Minerva had come back looking like the cat that ate the canary, he had found out his little messiah-in-the-making had been out of his control for almost a decade, but here he was in Ireland learning who knows what from a legend!

Harry left the kitchen, dumping his bowl in the kitchen sink, presumably to get ready to go out to fix a problem that had been driving one of the most powerful wizards in the world bonkers as if it was as simple as going out to mow the lawn!

The wards he had placed to alert him of the health, well being, and location of The Boy-Who-Lived had never so much as hiccuped, so he had always assumed the two Marauders had never found the boy, even if they had apparently tracked down Ginevra in short order (before Sirius had ever been released), as Molly had come running to him the next day, demanding the return of 'her' daughter, and though he was loath to do it, he allowed them to remain in control of her, it after all would maintain an ancient bloodline after Harry was forced to sacrifice himself for the Greater Good. Apparently Harry had been taken from the Dursleys before Sirius had even been released from prison! He had had no clue where the savior of the British Wizarding World had gone, and when he had failed to show up for his first year of Hogwarts, all of his carefully laid plans had fallen apart. And then to add insult to injury someone had come along last year and destroyed the trap he had laid to ensnare Riddle in, which had already lost part of its usefulness as a test of Harry. He had also lost a extremely valuable magical artifact, no matter how dangerous it was.

Not to mention the earful he had gotten from Minerva... If she wasn't such a good administrator (and if most of the Board of Governors wouldn't rally around her), he would have sacked the infuriating woman!

Nicolas turned to Dumbledore and spoke in a firm tone, as the older looking man simply continued to stare at where Harry had been seated, "We are going to be removing the access list of our wards. The only reason we haven't yet is because, quite frankly, we forgot. Memory is one of the first things to go with age, after all. After what you tried to pull involving two of our last descendants back after All Hallows Eve of '91, we wouldn't trust you with a potato. Now get out of our home, and be glad that our grandson is such a good person and we don't want him feeling guilty about us turning you into a radish."

* * *

Since Harry had been introduced to some of the unbelievable and amazing things that were apparently in his family history, he had dived into familiarizing himself with the tales of his ancestors. They could trace their line, in name unbroken (though heavily altered given shifts in language) back to when a Potter had been Myrddin's (or as he was more commonly known now, Merlin) last, and greatest, apprentice. He had left everything to that young man, Balthazar Potter, after he had passed away following the fall of Camelot. Of course, Merlin had used magic like no one before or since, and it was the extremely rare Potter that was even capable of using even the smallest part of the shear wealth of knowledge he had left behind.

He had found the rune language that the great wizard had almost exclusively used. And if what the man had written in the description of it was true, it was the only completely unabridged source of Atlantean runes known to man. He had become enchanted with it, and had taken it up in a fervor, abandoning the use of all other rune languages in his personal projects, though he still studied and used the others for the projects the world at large would see.

The true power of a runic language was not in how much power the could conduct, and if it was, there were languages more capable of it than the Atlantean runes. The strength of a language was in how capable it was of describing, and the runes left behind by Myrddin were the most descriptive he had ever seen, and the great Master had left copious notes on them.

There was a feature in the Atlantean runes that he was trying to replicate into the more widely known runic alphabets, one that if he managed to get it to work properly, would take him far closer to the eventual Grand Mastery he was hoping to achieve in runes. And so he would be killing time by painting small arrays onto discs of stone, metal, and wood (and taking copious notes), waiting for whoever was responsible to show their face.

There was also the fact that Slytherin's only other child, his beloved daughter, had married into a minor pureblood family shortly after her insane bigot of a brother had been cast out of the family. The family had been lost to magic a few generations later, and remained that way until Lily had been a witch. It had been Aldric and his descendants who had given both Parselmouths and Slytherins in general their Dark reputation over the years.

Those were the topics that Harry was thinking about as he wound his way down through the seven 'official' levels (the first of which, the dungeons, were the only one accessible by students) that existed below ground at Hogwarts, floating on a large rune carved plank that was one of his latest projects. He resisted the urge to go poking around, for he had business to do, and he could play 'what's in the bowels of the ancient castle' later.

* * *

As Harry heard the grinding of the stairs shifting into place, he disillusioned all of the furniture he had transfigured and hid his bags before throwing The Invisibility Cloak over himself. It had been an interesting few weeks. He'd done some exploring and found his ancestor's private library (among a few other feature of the chamber), though it was seemingly missing all its books on the Darker Magics. He had also found Isis (who had consented to having her venom milked, and though he and his sister could easily live off the interest of their inheritances, Harry had never liked leeching off of anyone), quite sane but under an old compulsion that had forced her to obey Tom Riddle, who she said had commander her to call him Lord Voldemort. That was something that he hadn't been aware of but was fairly certain that Dumbledore knew but believed wasn't for popular consumption.

If he took most of the adults he knew at their word, Albus Dumbledore would probably try to convince the world that the sky wasn't blue.

He'd also found out that Isis was dying. Though it had been assumed that Basilisks were immortal, there was the given fact that none had actually lived more than a century, and with Isis here at over a thousand years old, there was the proof that they could actually die of old age. Between her, Raiden, and himself, they had managed to determine that she would pass sometime in the next three months, but that she wouldn't be in pain, that it would be reasonably peaceful, and she would be at full strength up until the end. Harry had opened up one of the passages to the surface, using the method described in Salazar's journals, and given her a last command to seek out the rumored Acromantula nest in the Forbidden Forest and destroy it if it actually did exist. He would help her in mopping up after he dealt with whoever was terrorizing the school.

Harry thought that a colony of man-eating spiders that reproduced like hyper-fertile rabbits a stones throw from a school was not a good thing, and Isis agreed with him. She had been glad that the last thing she could do for the school would be exactly one of the things that Salazar Slytherin had left her there for. To protect the students of Hogwarts.

He watched as the massive doors that separated the entrance of the Chamber from its largest portion open, revealing a blond waif of a girl in Ravenclaw robes whose eyes were glowing a malevolent red. She took three steps into the massive hall only to receive a stunner to the chest and be levitated before she struck the floor.

A small leather bound book fell out of her robes and struck the ground. Harry moved the girl over to the cot he had set up for his stay in the chamber. He drew one of his wands and cast a few detection charms, and nothing seemed off with her, so he started casting various detection and revealing spells on the book, while removing the disillusionments on his furniture with and idle wave of his free hand. What he got back from them put a frown on his face as he moved over, doing his best to sense the magics that were in the book and failing terribly. His ability to feel magics from a distance was absolutely shite.

He tapped a section of his glasses, scrutinizing the the book with the various enhanced vision modes built into them. Though his vision had been fixed by a potion that had been developed after his parent's deaths, Nicolas had gotten him these glasses for a twelfth birthday present, saying that part of safety was in preparedness and the ability to gather information. Finally deciding he wouldn't lose a hand if he picked it up, he grabbed the book, shivering with disgust at the feel of the magics against his skin and moving toward the table he had been sitting at.

His capability at sensing magic through skin contact, however, had always been above par.

And he recognized where this magic had come from. Even though it had been a little over half a decade since his scar had been purged, and he had only been six at the time it had been forcibly removed from his head, he had still spent four and a half years with a chunk of the man's black soul and dark magic leeching off of him, and therefore he knew that Voldemort had made this book. Flipping it open, Harry grabbed a quill and ink and wrote,_ 'Testing, one, two, three, testing.'_ The words sank into the paper moments after he had finished writing, only for the ink to reappear in a different hand.

_'Hello, who might I have the pleasure of speaking with?'_

_'I'd greet you politely, Voldemort, but quite frankly I have questions I want answered before I destroy this book, and I am not going to waste the ink or time it would take to do so on you.'_

_'I have no clue who this Voldemort fellow you are speaking of is, no matter how fearsome he sounds. My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.'_

_'You may not see it, but I am rolling my eyes now. I have ways of making you talk. Describe the magics that created you.'_

_'All I am are memories stored in a book, charmed to act like my sixteen year old self.'_

_'And I am the tooth fairy. I'll ask one more time before I start drawing rune arrays to enforce my will and start testing a theory I have that my magic is either hostile or outright toxic to yours, due to reasons you don't need to know. What are the magics that created you?'_

_'Tell me you name, and maybe I'll tell you.'_

_'Go to hell, Tom.'_

Pulling out one of the bottles of ink that he used when writing out runes, of which one of major ingredients was his own blood, Harry turned the book so that the pages would turn vertically and started writing out a rune array after rune array, all while pumping so much energy into the book that his magical aura occasionally flared into the visible spectrum. A few comments would pop up from Voldemort, but Harry merely waited for the words to fade away before continuing his work.

_'What are you doing to me?'_

_'Stop that!' _

_'Cease what you are doing!'_

_'I **command** you to stop!'_

The last comment was accompanied by a burst of compulsion, but one of the spells he had identified on the book was a compulsion to write in it, and another subtler one was to not speak of it. With how his mind's defenses (if they could be called such a word) were constructed, the mental magics could simply not find his mind to effect him.

After half an hour, Harry slumped back in his chair, tired from his exertions. Picking up the quill and using the normal black ink, Harry wrote, _'Now, describe the magics that made you.'_

'I am a Horcrux.'

_'What is a Horcrux?'_

'A Horcrux is a container for a fragment of a person's soul that has been torn from the rest. It requires that one murder another human in cold blood. There are rituals that must be performed a few days before and almost immediately after, and a third that is used to move the soul piece to its container. The container itself must be very carefully prepared. It is a means by which to become immortal.'

_'How would one destroy a Horcrux, if you don't know theorize.'_

'The spells and rituals involved in the creation of a Horcrux's container harden it against most damage, so I can only assume that the easiest way would be things that would instantly cause massive, irreparable damage, such as basilisk venom and Fiendfyre, would destroy a Horcrux. One could probably unbind the soul fragment if they were well versed in that particular magical domain, and an enchanter could possibly negate the magic sustaining the soul fragment.'

_'I am going to assume that one can make more than on Horcrux, though I shudder at the thought of mauling one's soul so. Is this your first Horcrux or a later one, if so what are your prior ones, and were you even planning on making more than one, if so how many?'_

'I have made one Horcrux prior to this diary, and it was a ring that is a Gaunt family heirloom of our ancestor Salazar Slytherin. I was indeed planning on making multiple Horcruxes, six in total so that I may have a seven part soul.'

_'Where did you hide the ring, what are the protections surrounding it, and what is the easiest way to bypass those protections?'_

Harry let loose a feral grin at the book and said out loud, "This is what you get when an enchanted object attempts to tangle with the youngest Rune Master in recorded history."

* * *

Harry sat next to the girl, trying to decide his next course of action. On the table, the diary lay cleaved in two, with a sock laying beside it. He had taken Salazar Slytherin's goblin forged battle axe, which he had infused with basilisk venom to strengthen it, and simply chopped the Dark object in half.

One of the problems was that the bastard was planning on making a grand total of six of them... and had made enough that he soul was frayed enough that a part had flown off in the chaos of October 31st, 1991. He had the equivalent of a graven invitation on the first Horcrux Voldemort had ever made, and if the description of it was right, it was also a red carpet leading right to the Resurrection Stone.

The other was that this girl had been possessed by the malignant spirit of a quasi-immortal Dark Lord for most of a school year. He really didn't want to wake her and deal with the drama that would ensue.

He had packed up the rest of the belongings into the duffel he had brought them in, which was now shrunk and in his pocket, and now he had to decide what to do with the girl.

Making up his mind, he stuffed the two halves of the diary into the sock, pocketed it, hefted the axe over his shoulders, and he levitated the girl with a wandless spell from his free hand, and set off toward Flitwick's office. He was after all the poor girl's Head of House.

* * *

Outside of Flitwick's office Harry idly wondered what he was going to do next when the door was flung open to reveal a grinning Filius Flitwick, who asked, "Harry Potter, I presume? Minerva sung your praises after the Christmas holidays of last year. And this year too, if I remember correctly."

Harry quirked a puzzled eyebrow, and Flitwick, still beaming, continued, "With Dumbledore temporarily dismissed as Headmaster, Minerva is the acting Head while I am the acting Deputy. Even if I didn't have enough of an attunement to wards because of that, I would still be able to keep track of my students as the Head of Ravenclaw... One of which went missing a while ago, right out of the middle of the castle. Though I would like to note, you do not appear to be showing up on any of the wards I have access to..."

Harry simply raised a finger to his lips in the near universal gesture of silence, and then spoke with a smirk, "Well I solved you little petrification problem. Someone sent in Voldemort's second Horcrux, which was purposefully made as a weapon."

The diminutive Professor paled, "Second, you say? If he was that cavalier with a fragment of his soul how many was he planning on making..."

"I questioned the diary quite thoroughly. Tom Riddle was enamored with the number seven, and greatly enjoyed the idea of having a seven part soul."

"And just how did you question a sentient dark object and get answers you could trust Mr. Potter?"

"Please call me Harry, Master Flitwick, and the reason I trust my information is because you are looking at the youngest recorded person to have ever attained a Mastery, with my being in Runes, with Sub-Masteries in Warding, Cursebreaking, Enchanting, and Symbolic Casting. Sadly, Grandfather Flamel has categorically stated that he will not allow me to apply for my Sub-Mastery in Alchemy until I've turned fifteen."

"Ahh... So she has been under the control of a teenage Dark Lord since the beginning of the school year?"

"Sadly that is so, sir."

"Bring her into my office, Harry. I'm going to contact her family, and I'm sure that her mother, father, and grandmother are going to want to thank you..."

* * *

Harry stepped out of Flitwick's office, slightly disturbed that he had gotten a bone crushing , hug from Minerva McGonagall (the Marauders had always gone on about her legendary sternness, and with her visits late in the last two Decembers, he could agree that she was a very stern woman) and also found himself to be the proud owner of a free lifetime subscription to the Quibbler.

The girl he had saved was Luna Lovegood, and apparently her father, Xenophilius, was well off enough to try and make a living pursuing his interest, which happened to be in providing the British Wizarding World with a tabloid. His wife, Professor McGonagall's daughter Selene, had told him how Xeno had found a copy of The Sun from the non-magical world while he was out to get some things from the grocer's one day, and had been so amused and mesmerized by it that he felt that it was now his purpose to bring that to the people of magical England. It was also used to publish his attempts to find magical creatures that no one had ever seen before, a goal in line with the Creatures Mastery he had always wanted by never pursued.

They hadn't woken Luna yet, and were indeed going to wait until a Mind Healer could be present for it so the healing from whatever harm Voldemort had brought onto the girl could start to be healed. The Lovegoods had invited Harry to visit their home at some point in the future after Luna was given a clean bill of mental health so that they could introduce her to the hero that saved her.

Hearing the sound of footsteps making their way down the corridor, Harry looked around to see Lucius Malfoy being followed by his house elf, and muttered, "Bad Faith incoming."

He leaned against Professor Flitwick's door and waited. He wasn't going to get a much better chance than this.

As the Lord Malfoy came to the door that was blocked by the lounging Potter, he said, "Out of my way you urchin! I have business with the acting Headmistress and the elves say she is in Flitwick's office."

Harry smirked and pulled the book-stuffed sock from his pocket, and tossed it to Lucius. "I believe you misplaced something, sir."

The sitting Head of the House of Malfoy glared at Harry as he pulled the halves of the book from the sock, tossing the article of clothing to the side. Scoffing he said, "I'd like to see you prove it, boy."

"I don't believe I have to. My Lord Black has been looking for an excuse to annul your marriage to Narcissa. Given the suspicions this event will raise, he will be forced to check," his eyes flickered to Malfoy's left forearm, "the current status of the loyalty oath the House of Malfoy gave when it signed the betrothal contract. If I remember correctly, your family was in quite a bit of debt before you received Narcissa's dowry, and I wonder just how many investments you have made with her upkeep allowance... But the thing I hope the most for is to have someone willing to provide a pensieve memory of the day you inform your Master of that diary's destruction."

The man alternated between a rather interesting shade of puce and a rather amazing degree of paleness for one of his complexion as his hand constricted around the head of his walking stick, and he growled out, "And just who are you to make these threats concerning the Lord Black, boy?"

Harry just smirked, and said, "His heir."

Lucius's eyes narrowed as his complexion seemed to decide on doing an impression of a bleached white bed sheet. His hand moved with blazing swiftness as he grated out, "_Avada_..."

And Harry just continued smirking.

Before he even started the fourth syllable, Malfoy was magically slammed into a wall by his house-elf, who was clutching a sock for dear life. The little being simply yelled, "You will not hurt Harry Potter!"

Lucius stared at the elf with an uncomprehending look on his face, before he turned to Harry and yelled, "You cost me my servant boy!"

"Yes, yes, I did Lucy. And Lord Black is going to pauperize you. Deal with those little facts of life."

Lucius Malfoy paled with startling speed, and spun on his heel, fleeing from the scene of his defeat at the hands of a twelve year old.

As soon as the man was out of sight and hearing range, Harry started laughing so hard that he fell on his arse. As soon as he had finished laughing himself silly, he muttered under his breath, "I haven't had that much fun since I played a game of chicken with a professional seeker and won!"

All those lessons on acting (Sirius had stressed the word in particular when he was being taught this) as a proper 'pureblood' (or in his case, scion of an Ancient house), had more than paid off if this was the result.

Touching the still shocked elf on the shoulder, Harry beckoned the little fellow to follow him.

Harry raised some privacy wards and said, "Thank you for the warning that you gave me this summer, Dobby, I am sorry I ended up at Hogwarts anyway, but I felt that I had to deal with the issue that you had so gently tried to steer me away from."

"Harry Potter is the bestest and most noblest wizard in the world! Dobby is not worthy to..."

"It is all thanks to you that I was able to figure out who it was that was behind the opening of the Chamber, and I don't mean Riddle. By you warning me about Hogwarts being a dangerous place to be this year, and by never having been told that you were not to tell anyone who you served, I was able to figure it out. Freeing you from an abusive family is the least I could do."

The little elf started crying tears of joy while he wrung his ears as he repeated, "Thank you, Harry Potter, thank you!"

When the excitable little fellow had once more calmed down, Harry knelt down to his level and said, "I know that you probably won't survive too long without being bonded to a family... So I was wondering if you wanted to be my elf?"

Dobby's eyes widened to proportions that threatened to make Harry start laughing as he made a sound that Harry had only heard come from Japanese fangirls before (he still shuddered whenever he heard 'Squee!' and knew that he was in danger of having a horde of fangirls of his own due to the legends surrounding him in British Magical world), and then started chanting, "Yes, yes, yes..."

Harry pulled a set of envelops from his pocket and handed them to the hyper elf, saying, "I'm heading into the Forbidden Forest, could you post these for me?"

* * *

Sitting in the warded tent that he had created through Transfiguration, waiting for dawn when the Acromantula would be at their least active, he thought about the camping trips Moony and Aunt Hestia had taken him on. Originally it had just been something the three of them had enjoyed, getting away from civilization (Padfoot and Gin-gin weren't overly fond of the Great Outdoors, aside from its uses in flying, Quidditch, and pranks, and had never come again after the first time).

It had slowly started to include lessons on how to survive in the wilderness, both with and without a wand (though that little fact started to mean less and less as Harry became more adept), or with various constraints on the size and amount of magic he could use unless he raised the proper wards. There were a great many spells that would make wilderness survival require a lot less know how, mostly directed at what was, and wasn't, safe to eat or drink, but Transfiguration would always be considered one of Harry's favorite tools.

He looked at the small temporary ward stone he had made for this set of defenses, a large chunk he had picked up from the ground and shaped with a few spells. There were dozens of larger ones in a ring around the Acromantula colony, ready to raise a Containment ward that would only allow him and Isis in and out.

He had had an encounter with the Centaurs, who seemed overly belligerent, a few days ago, and had been directed here by one of them, who was one of the few that didn't seem to hold an innate dislike of humans. Firenze had stopped by a few times to speak with him, and Harry had already had his fill of the ruddy stargazers. Those that didn't seem to like humans due to pureblood prejudice against anything that wasn't them couldn't seem to turn the faces away from the sky.

Acromantula venom was another valuable commodity that he would soon have quite a bit of.

* * *

It was early in the morning of October 25th, 2003, when Harry was playing with a Runic array, trying to divine just how to make use of True Summoning (the art of pulling a distant object from a distant point without it traveling the space between it and the destination) when the array flared unexpectedly. He disappeared in a flash of light. As no one was home, and no one would be for another ten hours (Uncle Remus was attending three classes today one on Astrophysics, another on Vulcanology, and the last on the history of the Western World, Ginny and Padfoot were out making an entire day of their going out to see game six of the World Series, and Aunt Hestia was working), and so his temporary disappearance was completely missed as he returned from right were he had disappeared seven hours later.

Though he was looking worse for the wear, like he had been out in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks, he didn't seem hurt. He glanced at the clock on his wall, which also gave the date, and was surprised. He then started muttering to himself.

"No more playing with that unless I keep a full survival kit on me and detailed notes on just how to get back. Now to figure out just how the hell I cut a hole through reality and ended up in the Labyrinthine Hedge... I would like to know just how I accidentally rediscovered the divide between this world and the one of the True Fae..."

As he limped off to his bathroom, he said, "I'd also like to know just why the hell I spent a fortnight in there when only seven hours passed here..."

* * *

It was Halloween, 2004, at about three in the afternoon, and Harry was enjoying an pleasant walk through the neighborhood that they lived in in Staten Island, a gray cloak wrapped around him. All of his teachers had by this point felt they had taught him all they could while confined to International N-Level work. And so he had taken some time off to revise everything he knew and prepare for the tests that he had promised himself that he would take in January.

He was just about to turn around and begin heading home where he felt his entire body pulled eastward. Cursing under his breath, Harry likened it to portkey travel (his most despised form of magical transit) except the pull was not confined to behind his naval. He nearly stumbled as he felt it again, this time swearing quite audibly in Irish. Drawing his wands, he had the vague feeling that the third time was going to be the charm, and he had no clue where he was going to end up.

Soon he was being pulled through a hazing vortex of fume and flame, again a strange parallel to the whirling storm of colors of a portkey. Bracing himself as he would for a landing with a portkey, he was slammed down on his feet, but managed to remain upright. He spun in a quick circle, taking in his surroundings and looking for any threats. He saw black robes with four different colored trims, pale blue robes made of silk, and thick woolen robes the color of blood. He was in a massive hall that had five tables, four populated by kids ages eleven to eighteen, and the last filled with adults, while the ceiling reflected the night sky that was apparently.

And then he saw the fabled Goblet of Fire.

He only had one thing to say.

"Bloody hell!"

* * *

**Author's Note, the Second: Was working my way through this correcting minor errors. Had to do it again when the tab closed for no apparent reason. Anything obvious missed was because I had been adding the scenes in the Forest and had yet to do anything below it (i.e. _almost done_).**


	4. Chapter I

**Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. It belongs to Rowling.**

**Author's Note: I give my most grateful thanks to those kind enough to take the time out of their day to review my most humble work.**

**Once again, sorry for the long delay, the muses were on strike.**

**Continuing Note: A general timeline shift is in effect. All dates are a decade later than canon. Therefore the current date in story is Sunday October 31, 2004 as opposed to the canon Monday October 31, 1994.**

* * *

Chapter I: Geis

* * *

Harry muttered a few choice curses in Japanese as he slipped his wands into their holsters of black dragon leather, which hung from his belt, just below the small of his back. His eyes continued to flicker everywhere, though they kept being dragged back to the enchanted object that had dragged him across an ocean, and probably bound him to compete in one of the two most violent past times that the European Wizarding World had.

One was the Dueling Circuit, and the other was the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

Patting down his pockets, obviously looking for something, he turned to the Headmaster and said, rather belligerently, "Alright Dumbledore, you'd better have a damn good answer as to why I just got my arse dragged across the bleeding Atlantic Ocean, or so help me, you'll be slapped with so many lawsuits you won't know up from down!"

The Headmaster blinked several times before he gently said, "Harry, my boy..."

Harry let out a soft 'ah-ha' before, turning to Dumbledore and interrupting the venerable wizard, "Take your grandfatherly condensation, turn it sideways, and stuff it up your arse old man," he said as he pulled a length of fine chain from a pocket, and it looped through a pair of simple looking rings. One was of a blood red gold the other of some black metal, though both were imbedded with different Celtic designs. He idly slipped the rings off the chain and onto the first two fingers of his right hand.

The old man's voice hardened as he spoke, "There is no need for impertinence, Harry."

"Of course there is old man. I haven't given you permission to be familiar with me, and as I said, I was just yanked over three thousand miles away from my home," he held up the hand he had just put the rings on, palm inward and only the first two fingers extended into the two-fingered salute, and the rings gave off soft sparks. "I can only assume you have yet to go senile and know just how much hell I can raise by being able to wear two Primary Heir rings from Ancient Houses, and you still haven't answered my question!"

It was likely that it was only though more than a century of controlling his emotions that Dumbledore did not start yelling at Harry Potter then and there.

Continuing in his grandfatherly and patronizing tone, Dumbledore said, "Your name came out of the Goblet of Fire."

There was a half minute of silence, the Great Hall having been shocked into it by both the sudden arrival of the Boy-Who-Lived and his behavior, as Harry held out for Dumbledore to elucidate on his nine word explanation.

He finally got tired of waiting.

"That's it? 'My name came out of the Goblet of Fire'," he mocked, "You've been held unaccountable by too many people for far too long if you think that is suitable explanation Dumbledore. Now if the Goblet, which every party involved in the Tournament has always held is a means of creating and enforcing a Magical Contract, was actually that, I wouldn't be standing here! Now, I am going to be exercising my rights as an Heir to an Ancient House and am going to examine the magical object which as **assaulted** me and quite possibly bound me **against my will**."

All eyes in the room had been going back and forth between the teen and the old man, like watching some kind of demented tennis match, and all eyes turned back to the Headmaster, "Now Harry I don't think..."

Harry interrupted again, "I still haven't given you permission to be familiar with me. And I will be examining the Goblet of Fire, or your name will be added to the charges of assault and binding."

Dumbledore was finally brought to a cold stop by that. He could easily get away with any charge of assault, he was too secure in the government in too many places to be brought low by something so trivial, but binding an Heir to one House, let alone two, against his will was something not ever he could walk away from unscathed. It was something that could be closely linked with Line Theft, and century long feuds that exterminated families tended to follow the leveling of that particular charge.

"Of course, if you would just go through that door and wait with the other Champions..."

"I am not complying with anything having to do with the Tournament until after I have examined the Goblet. I could only be in the initial stages of whatever it is that will hold me to compete, and any compliance would be seen as accepting whatever binding it is. You should know this, Headmaster, or maybe you are starting to go senile in your old age. I assume any of your professors, besides Snape that is, can see me to a place where I can work and put me into contact with an elf that can get me supplies, as I obviously wasn't expecting to travel."

Dumbledore let out a barely perceptible sigh and said, "Of course, Mr. Potter, of course. Professor McGonagall if you would kindly show Mr. Potter to a place where he may examine the item in question. I shall inform the other Champions of this... irregularity and that they may be required to wait for a while..."

The Deputy Headmistress got up from the Head Table and gestured for Harry to follow her out of the Hall. He snatched the Goblet up and exited after her.

As soon as they were clear of the Hall and out of earshot of anyone within, she asked crisply, "Did you really so impertinent?"

"Yes. I will never trust Dumbledore. I am not wasting politeness on him either. He attempted to place me with a man and woman who hated my mother for being a witch, and he attempted to steal my sister from my family. I will refuse to play his games by his rules at every turn. Now, I'll need a surface to work on, any size will do so long as the room will easily accommodate something three feet wide and eight feet long."

She nodded, and had led Harry off to a room with a table larger than what he needed. He gestured leisurely with left hand and the table shrunk to the dimensions he had mentioned earlier. While he was doing this, Minerva called out, "Slipsy!"

A female House-Elf appeared with a crack, gave McGonagall a curtsy, and asked, "Yes, Deputy Headmistress?"

"Mr. Potter has need of somethings, if you would please..."

The elf turned her eyes to Harry and waited.

"Thank you. I need a least a cup of ink, by volume. A ceramic basin or bowl capable of holding thrice that much, if not more. I need something copper that I can take filings from, nickle too if possible. I'll also need a fountain pen and an ink well, along with at least three dozen sheets of parchment, probably more."

The elf disappeared after giving another quick curtsy, and McGonagall decided to strike up some conversation. Harry had removed his cloak and hung it over one of the chairs in the room.

"So, Luna told me that you, her father, Remus, and her went Jackalope hunting during June," she said with a soft smile.

Harry started chuckling as the elf popped back in to deposit a common fountain pen and simple clear glass inkwell on the table, "Jackalopes are quite well known in American Magical Society... though apparently the same cannot be said for Britain... It was nice to go out camping and not have it turn into a survival exercise."

Still chuckling he picked up the inkwell with his right hand as he drew a wand with his left. Spinning the wand around the object, watching carefully as he magically carved runes for a symbolically cast spacial expansion charm on its interior and runes for half of a transference spell on the exterior. Nodding, he gripped the inkwell more tightly in his hands and the runes flared to life on the inside before the glass became hazy and opaque.

While he was doing this Slipsy had popped in and out a few times, depositing a few very large jars of ink, a plain looking white ceramic wash basin, and an old copper potion knife. Idly tapping the fountain pen and he quickly transfigured it into the likeness of another fountain pen he was intimately familiar with, including the runes for the second half of the transference spell.

He then picked up the knife as Professor McGonagall spoke again, "Nobody ever spoke about specific instructors you learned from. Your Transfiguration is easily at N.E.W.T.s level, who taught you?"

"Swetaketu Suresh," Harry replied simply as he repeatedly tapped the copper knife, grains of some powder dropping off as he slowly removed impurities from the metal. Nodding to himself he tapped the knife one more time as this time he held it over the basin, and a portion of it dissolved into a fine dust that dropped into the container.

Minerva McGonagall simply watched Harry work for a few minutes as she contemplated someone younger than forty, who did not hold at least not grade N.E.W.T.s, studying under one of the most potent wielders of Transfiguration in the world.

As he was directing ink into the basin, she found her voice again and asked, "Just how did he teach you to make you so effective at it after... how long did you study under the Grand Master?"

"Close to seven years of four hour sessions five days a week. And he taught by example, and exemplification of visualization, will, and practice. There were never any of the crutches that normal students of Transfiguration are taught with. No complex sets of wand motions nor intensive strings of Dog Latin, in order supplement less than adequate visualization or transference of will into magic. Just visualizing the change, or for conjuration, creation, of what you want, magically enforcing your will to make it so, and then properly directing the will infused magic. It was hard, but on my International O-Level for Transfiguration, my practical was borderline M."

She was one again struck dumb, and went back to watching Harry work, though he was now holding his wand against his wrist and was apparently bracing himself for something. That something became clear when he pulled the wand away and a large glob of blood came with it.

Panting slightly, Harry said in a hitched voice, "I'm glad I was able to get the copper, or else I would have needed three times the blood to give the ink the proper potency... Though I wish I had could have gotten the nickel, I would have only needed half as much blood... My normal inks don't have anywhere near as much blood as this, a tithe of the amount at most."

He dropped the blood into the ink mixture and gestured at it with his free hand, so that it began stirring itself. Slipsy had at some point delivered the asked for parchment, which Harry made a number of quick motions with his wand, spreading the sheets onto the table and then binding them into one massive swath of paper.

She continued to watch for forty-five minutes as Harry then inked out a massively complicated array completely by hand and eye. Even the Castle's resident Runes Mistress used guides of some kind, and Bathsheda Babbling was one of the premier names in the craft in Britain that was outside of those in Gringotts's employ.

When he finished inking the array, Harry dropped into a chair and rested for a few moments.

The Transfiguration Mistress of Hogwarts had never seen Runes worked with this level of complexity, and so asked, "Mr. Potter, would you mind if I got one of my colleagues to look this over... I'm really curious as to what she would make of this."

Harry nodded distractedly, "Sure, I need a few minutes to rest anyway. I don't like empowering arrays when my thinking is fuzzy. Do you think you could get an elf to get me something from the Kitchens, ma'am?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter. Slispy?" The elf from before appeared and after a few hushed words, popped away as the Professor left the room.

* * *

Five minutes later Professors McGonagall and Babbling walked back into the room, to see Harry just finishing up a stew from a bowl that was on a tray floating in front of him. Seeing the two adults walk in, he grinned and stood, grabbing the tray and setting it on the chair he had just vacated. Babbling rushed over to the Array and practically cooed over.

The Runes Mistress of Hogwarts appeared to be in her mid to later thirties, had wavy long brown hair and rounded joyful features with bright gray eyes. As she circled the table, she called out, "This Ackley's A-Level Array for Divining the Features of Enchanted Objects?"

"My own modification of Allheart's S-Level derivation, but yes, that is the base of the array."

"I've never seen the original or any of the alterations in their complete forms, but I know that the original only used Norse, Celtic, and Gaelic characters. Allheart's added Sumerian and... Hittite I think it was..."

"Babylonian."

"Ahh, yes, I've never been as familiar with the two as I wished I could be. I assume the Egyptian and Aztec characters are your own addition?"

"Yes, I found an object that overloaded all the other derivations, so I had to build on the one that could take the heaviest load."

"If my first glance is right, this array would probably receive a U-Level ranking, if not an outright X. Are you sure someone of your age should be playing with Rune Arrays of these levels?"

"I assume you keep abreast of the International Masters Roll?"

"Of course."

"You know the name that isn't really a name on it? That's me."

"You're the Unnamed Master?"

Sighing, Professor McGonagall interrupted, "Bathsheda, if you would please?"

"Ah, yes, sorry Minerva, I've just never really worked with or seen complete arrays of this level of intricacy. It is one of the most complex rune workings I have ever seen. But that isn't really saying much, my Mastery is a British teaching Mastery, and that doesn't really stand up to those who go and get theirs for original research and composition at an International level..."

"Ladies, if you are ready, I'd like to fire up the array now. I want to know what in Hades this Goblet has bound me with..."

He placed the Goblet, which had long since gone out, in the center of the array and then laid his fingers as various points along one of the edges. Taking a deep breath, he started slowly pushing magic into the rune construct. There were first a few glimmers, soft lights that could almost be ignored as tricks played by the torchlight of the castle. Then the array started to glow with a gentle blue light. The light intensified over the course of the next ninety seconds until they could barely stand to look at it. Then arcs of electricity started rising into the air from the array. Three minutes after activating the array, the light show died down and Harry slumped against the table.

He weakly muttered, "I both hate and love this monster of an array. Oh so useful, and such an energy hog..."

He pushed himself up and walked over to a corner of the sheet of parchment where a piece of it the size and shape of standard letter size paper was filled with something written in English. He idly detached the section from the reset with a wandless spell, before Vanishing the array with a simple gesture.

Professor Babbling pouted and said, "I was hoping to study it..."

Rolling his eyes as he read the sheet of parchment, Harry replied, "Tough, one of the primary active ingredients in any runic ink worth its name is the blood of the one who is going to power it. And it takes a fool to leave that kind of sympathetic component laying around..."

He paled as he finished reading, cursed, and read it again, while reaching out for one of the extra jars of ink and sheets of parchment. Cursing again, he copied the page onto three other sheets of parchment before Vanishing it too.

He quickly grabbed up the fountain pen before quickly pulling his wand and Transfiguring it again, the new pen being similar in structure, but was almost bone white in color. He signed his name at the bottom left corner of one of the sheets, the newly Transfigured pen writing out his full name in blood, before casting two dozen various protection and preservation spells on it. He then folded it into the shape of an envelope and then transfigured the parchment itself into a seal, and then casting a few more spells on it. He threw his cloak back on and slipped the envelope into a pocket in it, while idly flicking his wand out and vanishing the unused ink.

"I think it is time for me to join the Champions, Professor. There is going to be no getting out of this for me."

* * *

As Harry and Professor McGonagall walked into the room off of the now empty Great Hall, they found three irate champions, two angry school heads, two Ministry fools, a serene looking old man, and a snarky, greasy haired git.

Harry came to a stop and bluntly said, while gesturing at the man, "Just what is he doing here? The trim on the Hogwarts student's robes indicates he is a Hufflepuff, not a Slytherin, so unless some position has been created between Head of House and Deputy Head, Professor Sprout has more of a place here than him!"

"Potter, you are arrogant..."

"Just like my father?" Harry asked blandly, before twisting his wrist and flaring out the fingers of his empty left hand. A bolt of semi-translucent energy suddenly leapt from the palm of Harry's hand, catching everyone in the room, including Snape who it struck, by surprise. The man it hit was affected by a combination Inversion Hex, Sticking Charm, and Silencing Spell, and so he now found himself laying on his back, stuck to the ceiling, soundlessly yelling at the fourteen year old who dared show him such disrespect. Harry stared at Snape rather emotionlessly, and gently said, "If you cannot say anything constructive, don't say anything at all. After all, I know exactly why Sirius and Remus are still friends after what my father had to do to save your life.

"Sorry about that," Harry said as he turned to the rest of the rooms occupants, "now I most want to apologize to you three," he gestured towards the three other Champions with his right hand, which held the Goblet of Fire, "for stealing your proverbial thunder. I don't want to be here or compete in this cursed Tournament."

The Champions seemed to have to resist the urge to step out of the way when he pointed the magical object at them.

Harry pushed onward, "But I don't really have a choice because this," he held up the Goblet and shook it back and forth, "is, according to my preliminary findings, a Class X cursed object," there were appropriate gasps of shock from two of the school Heads, Professor McGonagall, and surprisingly from the Durmstrang student, who Harry recognized as one of the youngest International Quidditch Players in the world, Viktor Krum. He was a tall young man, with a thin build, and sallow skin. He had a large curved nose with dark hair and eyes. One of the Ministry clowns looked confused while the other remained passive.

The young woman from Beauxbatons, who seemed to be a part Veela or some similar kind of nymph descendant, having the typical ethereal beauty and blonde hair of the kind, asked, in a thick French accent, "And just what is a Class X cursed object."

Krum grunted and ground out in heavily accented and broken English, "It is a killer. Used, whether improperly or correctly, it will make people dead. Just what makes young teen think that the object is a Class X?"

"Because, all four of us are now bound by a Geis," this time everyone in the room paled at the mention of just what magic was used, "What the Geis is exactly, I don't rightly know, as I was looking for the broad information on the Goblet, rather than the fine details. I do know that all the Geis needs to take hold is either the person's own signature, or a full name written out by someone else, and that failure to fulfill the Geis is punishable by death. Which is why my recommendation to place the Goblet of Fire on the ICW's Board for Magical Artifacts List of Dangerous Objects is going out as soon as humanly possible."

Dumbledore's eyes widened by a fraction at the mention of that course of action. He could not allow such a powerful magical object be destroyed because some were afraid of its power. For all his sway in the international community, he still hadn't been able to derail the ICW mandate on the destruction of all Class X objects. "Now, Harry, my boy..."

Harry's eyes flashed as he rounded on the Headmaster, "Now just what is it I have said several times this evening about familiarity, Dumbledore?"

Blinking, and finally caught off guard by Harry's repeatedly ignoring is grandfatherly persona and vehemence, Dumbledore simply said, "To not to."

"And I seriously doubt that the vast majority of the people in this room are going to let you get away with keeping the dangerous and deadly magical object from being destroyed. Now can we get on with whatever introduction to these dangerous and bloody games."

One of the Ministry stooges came forth, he looked like a powerfully built man gone to seed, '_Sirius had me memorize the names of just who the Department Heads in the Ministry were, and some of their notable features, this must be Ludo Bagman, Head of Magical Games, so the other is most likely Bartemius Crouch Senior, Head of International Cooperation, and the man who sent Paddy to Azkaban without a trial,_' and jovially said, "Well, as I said this is quite amazing, **four** Tri-Wizard champions! And the missing Boy-Who-Lived no less! Now, my associate, Mr. Crouch will explain just what is going to happen for the First Task."

"Yes, yes," Crouch said a few heartbeats later as he stepped into the light. The man was looking quite old, and there was a barely perceptible slur to his words. His eyes also had a barely glazed look to them. Harry blinked and was instantly on edge. Master Hop had drilled into him the telltale signs of a person under any number of Control Curses, including the British favorite, the Imperius. The signs for the Unforgivable were so slight as to be barely noticed, but they were there. With his paranoia going full blast, Harry just had to know whether the man was being controlled or just drunk on the job.

Harry took what he knew as Crouch's almost legendary talent for tongues, and spoke out in precise rapid fire French, "_Just what is the First Task, Mr. Crouch?"_

The man was brought up short for half a moment, before he pushed on, "We cannot tell you exactly what the First Task is, as it will be a test of your daring and ability to think under fire."

As Crouch took a breath, Harry spoke up again, asking in fluent Spanish, "_Just when and where will the First Task be?_"

There was a now noticeable pause as before Crouch said, a slur now recognizable in his voice, "The first task will take place on the Twenty-four of November in the Quidditch stadium here at Hogwarts."

"_And just how will the Tasks be judged?_" Harry asked in Cantonese as he continued to push the man.

There was a now a noticeable stutter after a few moments of silence, "Th-there is going to be a panel of five judges, the three Heads of each School, and two representatives from the British Ministry, each capable of awarding up to ten points."

Now in English, Harry said, "We need the DMLE here now. Mr. Crouch is under some dark curse that is controlling him. Likely the Imperius British dark wizards are so fond of..."

The room was shocked into silence, and only watched as Crouch quickly drew his wand before casting a sickly looking purple curse at Harry, who dodged to one side before whipping out his left leg in an arching kick, releasing a ribbon of red electric energy from the tip of his foot which Crouch attempted, and failed, to shield.

The man dropped like a puppet that had its strings cut. "Now, can someone please go get the Aurors? The Neural Disruption Stunner shuts down most Control Curses, but its never been tested against the Imperius."

* * *

It took ten minutes for the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement herself to get to the school, with a contingent of six Aurors. The statements were taken from the witnesses (otherwise known as the foreigners) and then were allowed to leave, Bagman was also questioned and then allowed to leave. When Harry was asked to let Snape down from the ceiling after they failed to remove his spells, he had said, "That man is the chief reason for the decline in Auror recruitment and Healer applications. If you want him down, you can do it yourself, or get Dumbledore to bring him down. I'm happy with him right where he is."

The seven people from the DMLE couldn't find themselves motivated to pry him off the ceiling, though they added a spell to keep sound from getting to him in addition to the one that enforced his silence.

Harry was questioned much more closely than any of the others, with Dawlish attempting to threaten him with Veritaserum. Harry had bluntly countered with the threat of Houses Potter and Black pulling what money they still had in Gringotts out all at once rather than the slow trickle that they had been removing for the past thirteen years, and causing a collapse of the British Magical Economy. That promptly shut Fudge's pet Auror up.

When Crouch was brought back to consciousness, a few charms found that he was not currently under the Imperius, but had been at some point within the last hour. He then started spilling his guts without even being dosed with Truth Potion.

He talked about how he had helped his son escape from Azkaban because of his late wife's insistence, and how he had kept Bartemius Crouch Junior under Imperious for almost thirteen years. He then talked about how Voldemort, with the aid of the now dirt poor and disgraced Lucius Malfoy, had found out about it from breaking a Memory Charm on Bertha Jorkins, and had come and freed his son while imprisoning him. He did not know what the Dark Lord's plans were, but that it involved replacing Alastor Moody with his son at Hogwarts.

After he finished singing like a canary as Harry put it (they had tried to get rid of him, but after he showed off his Heir rings and explained just how he viewed himself wronged, no one was willing to put the career on the line), the stunned and bound the man, before taking a page from Harry's book and sticking the man to the ceiling.

Harry idly thought about going with them, but trusted the Aurors to do their job, and so asked the Deputy Headmistress if the elves knew if there were any spare large mirrors in the castle.

* * *

Half an hour later as Harry had just finished carving a mass of runes around the outside two inches of the mirror, the Aurors and their boss came back in, levitating a stunned and bound Bartemius Crouch Junior, who shortly joined his father and Snape on the ceiling.

As the real Mad-Eye Moody limped into the room, looking extremely twitchy, Harry laid his palms against the glass of the mirror and muttered, 'Sanctuary'. The reflection in the mirror rippled for a moment before it dissolved and reformed into an image of a hallway with a few pictures hanging on the wall.

He then yelled, "Someone answer the bloody mirror! I've only got five minutes before the array ruins both the looking glass I am using and the one at home!"

A thirteen year old with dark hazel eyes, bordering on brown, and fiery red hair appeared moments later. She started talking immediately, "Harry, where in Merlin's staff are you? Everyone was starting to get worried."

"Get me an adult quick. If none are there, get Sirius. Do it, now Ginevra."

Her eyes widened slightly at her brother's use of her actual name, something he only did when he was very serious. The last time he had used it, he had been extremely hacked off from having just crumpled the front third of a high end sedan when she had fallen off her bicycle and into street. He'd almost destroyed the car that had nearly hit her and then been forced to modify the driver's memory.

Everyone in the room watched with some degree of awe as Harry made a trans-Atlantic Mirror Call, magic that had fallen out of use due to its seeming incapability of crossing large bodies of water. The all winced slightly as the girl on the other side of the mirror yelled out, "**Moony!** Harry's on the mirror!"

A moment later a man with brown hair and amber eyes appeared in the mirror, saying, "Cub you are in such big trouble..."

"It wasn't my fault Uncle Remus. The Goblet of Fire snatched me up and dragged my finely accoutred arse to Hogwarts to compete in the Tri-Wizard Cup."

The werewolf simply stared at Harry. The Potter Heir simply rolled his eyes and held up his right hand, palm out and fingers all together. "I, Harry Potter, do solemnly swear that what I just spoke is truth." His hand was briefly surrounded by a nimbus of soft green light as the minor oath took effect.

Remus Lupin's left eyebrow twitched and his eyes darkened. "I'll have the elves start packing up all of your things, and well be in merry old England before the sun sets there tomorrow. Do you know how you've been bound?"

"Lethal Geis."

A few additional muscle twitches showed Harry just how angry Moony was.

"Anything you want to add cub?"

"Yeah, make sure Dobby is one of the elves packing up my stuff, he knows all my hiding places and how to securely take down my Doors. And don't bother packing up this mirror, I'm going to have to make a new one. I used the overload functions to force a connection so if we end the call in the next thirty seconds, it should avoid melting it down to slag. It will still be unusable afterward."

Shaking his head, Remus replied, "Take care cub, see you in a day or two."

Turning around and seeing everyone staring at him, he shook his head softly, and said, "Okay, for those that need to know where I am, I'm going to set up a little camping site on the grounds, as a trust whatever wards I can raise there far more than any I can get up in the castle. I'm off to go get settled in, and then sleep like the dead for half a day or so."


End file.
